wee treats by tammy

Missing in Action

2010-11-29T15:34:00.001+13:00

Hi everyone

I've had a few e-mails lately about my blog, making sure I am ok. I am great - thanks everyone :0) I am just really busy. Work is busy, Harry keeps me busy and just lately blogging is just another thing to do! So, while I may come back to it some day soon, at the moment I am having a wee break to refresh!

Tammy :0)

Quick and Easy Home Made Gifts

2010-10-27T16:47:00.003+13:00

Harry had a very busy Sunday a couple of weeks ago as we had been invited to a second birthday party in the morning and a first birthday in the afternoon. In my pre Harry days I would have spent ages decorating little biscuits for my friends children, but with time being a bit more precious, these easy but still cute shortbread cookies were the quick version of decorated cookies.

A set of number shaped cutters are a great thing to have on hand to make quick and easy birthday gifts. These cookies were obviously for the two year old’s present. I simply made the shortbread in the number 2 shapes, whipped up a batch of royal icing (I whisk an egg white until frothy and then whisk in the desired amount of icing sugar – this kind of icing is less runny than glace icing and also sets to a nice thick consistency) and sprinkled over “boy” coloured sprinkles. The one year old party was for a girl and I made Number 1 shaped cookies and sprinkled them with pink sprinkles. In the past I have also made these for adult presents (a bag of 5s and 0s for a 50 year old, 3s and 0s for a thirty year old etc. Even just decorating the cookies with coloured icing gives some impact.

FFwD - Hachis Parmentier

2010-10-22T15:11:00.003+13:00

This week’s FFwD recipe is Hachis Parmentier. If there was no photo of the recipe in the book, I would have gathered from the name of the recipe that it is some kind of hash, and that is one way of describing this recipe. Dorie describes it as a French version of Shepherds Pie. The full recipe, which my sister made, takes a long time as it involves making your own beef broth and cooking basically a casserole before topping it with a cheesy potato mash. I made the quick version which is made with mince, and I am glad I did as my sister said she felt like she did a lot for what is essentially a fancy shepherds pie. I am sure Hayley’s hachis had a much greater depth of flavour than mine. I actually added more tomato paste to my meat mixture to give it a bit more depth. I am not a lover of shepherds pie or mashed potato, but I did think that the grated cheese through the potato and scattered over the top was a nice touch. See what the other FFwDers thought here.

Cupcakes, At Last!

2010-10-21T10:52:00.003+13:00

Last week book club was at my house, so for the first time in a long time, I made cupcakes. For my birthday at the start of the year, one of my good friends gave me the hummingbird bakery cook book. It is a lovely book full of delicious cakes, cupcakes, muffins etc but I had only ever made cookies from it. I had a look through it and found this recipe for peaches and cream cupcakes. They sounded delicious and also easy as they used a drained tin of peaches rather than fresh peaches.

The other thing I liked about the recipe is that it only had one egg and only 40g of butter. So many cupcake recipes have huge quantities of butter and numerous eggs, so not only was the recipe easy, it was also economical and fairly low in fat. Instead of making a buttercream icing, I topped the cakes with swirls of whipped cream. I love using whipped cream to top cupcakes, as I love cream far more than icing and it negates the need to serve some cream alongside the cakes. I made the cakes in pretty blue cupcake cases and topped them with little silver balls and blue flowers which I made a while ago. I think they looked really elegant and my book club friends enjoyed them too.

Peaches and Cream Cupcakes (from the Hummingbird Bakery cook book)

120g flour
140g sugar
1 ½ tsp baking powder
40g softened butter
120ml milk
1 egg
400g tin peaches, drained

• Combine flour, sugar and baking powder, then mixing in the softened butter using a cake mixer
• Combine the egg and milk and then gradually add to the dry ingredients. Mix to combine
• Place two slices of peach in each of 12 cupcake cases. Divide the cake mixture between the cases and bake at 170c for 20-25 minutes

TWD - Caramel Pumpkin Pie

2010-10-19T11:09:00.002+13:00

Short but sweet post today. TWD recipe is Caramel Pumpkin Pie and was chosen by Janelle of Mortensen Family Memoirs. Pumpkin Pie is not big in NZ and I think this is only the second time I have made it. I thought this pie was ok. I didn’t really love the highly caramelised flavour of the pie. I prefer my caramel to be on the sweeter, creamier side rather than the highly sugared almost burnt caramel flavour. I halved the recipe and made two mini pies, and cooked the rest of the pie filling in a small ramekin for my gluten free mum who was up staying over the weekend. Mum hadn’t tried pumpkin pie before and loved it. See if the other TWDers enjoyed it here.

FFwD - Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup

2010-10-15T11:21:00.002+13:00

This week’s FFwD recipe is Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup. Goodness, this was a hard recipe to photograph nicely! The soup almost has Thai flavours without the curry paste. It’s a coconut milk based recipe with fish sauce to season, chicken gently poached in the soup and noodles. There were also a myriad of things you cold flavour the soup with - I was a bit boring and just used lime juice.

The soup was nice – probably nicer the next day once all the flavours had had a good chance to meld together. I think if I made it again I would make the curry paste version just to give it a bit more depth of flavour. Check out the other FFwDers’ versions here.

Improvising for Harry

2010-10-13T15:31:00.002+13:00

When I am cooking dinner for my husband and I like to think of ways I can make a version of what we are having for Harry. Last week I made us a basmati rice, eggplant and lamb mince dish which had Moroccan flavours. It was obviously too spicy for Harry and also I don’t salt his food, and I found this dish needed a reasonable amount of salt to bring out the flavour. So after browning the mince with a little garlic, I put some in a different pot for Harry and added some rice and frozen peas. I cooked this mixture until the rice was cooked through.

Now by itself, this was pretty bland as you can imagine. I thought of adding tomatoes, but Harry has quite sensitive cheeks and I don’t want to give him anything too acidic until he is a little older. So, instead, I grated some cheese and stirred this through the mince mixture. I also added a cube of mashed pumpkin from the freezer. This mince and rice dish actually turned into a very tasty little dish. Harry loved it – it was a bit like risotto. And no, I didn’t let him eat it with his hands as the photo suggests –once again, trying to capture a little of Harry, he was too quick for me and had his hand in the bowl before I knew where I was. But I always have a wet cloth at the ready for times like those. My mum always says when we were kids she walked round with a hairbrush in one hand and a face cloth in the other – I think I will be the same!

TWD - Fold Over Pear Torte

2010-10-12T09:10:00.003+13:00

This week’s TWD recipe was chosen by my good blogging friend Gaye of Laws of the Kitchen. I was interested to see what Gaye would pick and she chose the Fold Over Pear Torte. Gaye said she chose it because there is no photo in the book and she was curious as to what it would look like. Reading through the recipe I must say it wasn’t one that I would pick first, but once it was made, it was so delicious I would definitely make it again!

I ended up making this torte on Sunday afternoon. As it would be just my husband and me eating it, I quartered the recipe and made it in a little 10cm round cake tin. Because of the size of my tin and the amount of pastry I had, my torte ended up looking like a pie. The crust is Dorie’s good for anything pie crust and it is delicious. In this case it was used to line a spring form tin and then was filled with a mixture of chopped pears, dried apricots and walnuts – I subbed flaked almonds for the walnuts. The fruit was then topped with a custard flavoured with vanilla and almond essence, the pie crust folded over the top and the torte baked.

We ate the torte warm out of the oven. It would have been wonderful with whipped cream, but we ate it with no accompaniment as we did the dishes after we put Harry to bed. Yum! Thanks Gaye for choosing something I may not have otherwise made! See what the other TWDers thought here.

The Elusive Metro Chocolate Chip Cookie

2010-10-11T10:31:00.002+13:00

Many years ago I tried a chocolate chip cookie in a café called Metro in Christchurch. It was the best chocolate chip cookie I had tasted – large chunks of chocolate, a texture that I guess is not crisp or chewy but is almost cakey, and large, oversized cookies. I remember at the time trying to re-create the metro cookie and I got pretty close – I even rang them at one stage to see if they would part with the recipe, but no luck!

Well, for her birthday I gave my sister a subscription to the foodtown magazine and she rang me a couple of weeks ago to say that a reader had written in requesting metro’s chocolate chip cookie recipe and they had printed it!! Hayley sent me through the recipe and it seems that the secret ingredient is not ground almonds as I had thought, but caramelised condensed milk. Now, I would never have guessed this, as whenever I have used caramelised condensed milk in cookies, I have ended up with quite soft cookies. Also, the cookies have a much higher ratio of flour than my usual recipe and less baking powder. The mixture is quite dry, but persevere with mixing that flour in. Nevertheless I faithfully used the recipe and I had them – the elusive metro chocolate chip cookie! This is one of the best. I also think that milk chocolate goes well in these cookies – usually I prefer dark chunks, but try milk chocolate in these.

Metro Chocolate Chip Cookies

250g butter
½ c sugar
2 tbsp caramelised condensed milk
3 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 ½ c milk chocolate buttons

• Cream butter, sugar and caramelised condensed milk
• Stir in flour, baking powder and lastly the chocolate
• Form large balls of dough and press down lightly with a fork
• Bake at 170c for 15-18 minutes or until golden and firm

FF - Gerard's Mustard Tart

2010-10-08T11:17:00.004+13:00

Today’s French Friday recipe is Gerard’s Mustard Tart. This is a leek and carrot tart with a custard filling with two types of mustard in it – Dijon mustard and wholegrain mustard. I always have both those mustards in the fridge and buy the Maille brand which is French. Maille mustards are fairly mild, so there wasn’t too much kick from the mustard.

I had some tomatoes at home, so substituted those for the carrots. Dorie’s recipe said to pour the custard into the tart shell and then arrange the vegetables on top. I did that, but if I was making the tart again, I would put the vegetables in and then pour the custard over the top. My leeks browned quite a lot and I think this was because I had more leek than I needed.

This was a yummy tart though. The home made shortcrust pastry is a winner and as we love mustard, the mustard filling was very yummy. See what the other FFwDers thought here.

Semolina for Harry

2010-10-06T14:20:00.004+13:00

I love childhood puddings (custard, tapioca, semolina etc) so it has been a pleasure to start making these puddings for Harry. Semolina has always been a favourite of mine and it must be years since I had it, but when you make it in the microwave, it is such a quick and easy pudding to make. It is also really stable, so you can make some today and then keep it in the fridge for a couple of days.

To make enough for two servings (when combined with fruit), put 125ml full fat milk, 2 tbsp semolina, ½ tsp sugar (or to taste) and ½ tsp vanilla into a microwave proof jug and stir. Microwave on high for 1 minute, then stir. The semolina pudding may need another 20-30 seconds to thicken it up a bit. Let it cool and then stir through your fruit of choice. You could have the semolina plain, but I like the idea of naturally sweetening it with a bit of fruit, and it also means that your baby is getting the goodness of the fruit as well.

Last week I mixed peaches and apple into semolina. This week I made pineapple semolina, by putting a drained can of pineapple pieces in the food processor and processing to the desired consistency (a little bit chunky for Harry at 8 months). I then stirred about three tablespoons of this and three tablespoons of pureed apple through the semolina. Harry absolutely loved it and so did I! I could easily eat this for my lunch too.

TWD - Double Apple Bundt Cake

2010-10-05T11:30:00.003+13:00

This week’s TWD recipe is Double Apple Bundt Cake and was chosen by Lynne of Honey Muffin. I made this on Saturday when we had my husband’s brother, his wife, her son and his friend staying with us. We had it for pudding after eating fresh snapper my husband had caught in the afternoon (delicious!!).

This cake was amazing. Everyone went back for seconds. It had a real apple flavour, but because it used grated apple instead of chunks of apple, it was much nicer on the palate. I must confess, I don’t know what apple butter is, which is one of the ingredients. I’ts not something we have in NZ and I can only imagine that it is a bit like lemon curd. So I did a substitution of apple jelly, using an apple jelly I had made quite a few years ago, but never used. Perhaps that was the secret ingredient to this delicious, moist cake. I drizzled over a lemon drizzle made simply with icing sugar and lemon juice. We had it with whipped cream. Perfect!

See what the other TWDers thought here.

French Fridays - Gougeres

2010-10-01T09:04:00.002+13:00

Today is the first day of a new challenge called French Fridays with Dorie and I, with a large number of others round the world (including my sister who I have convinced to participate) will be cooking our way through Dorie Greenspan’s latest book, At my French Table. Each week a new recipe will be selected and I will be cooking it and blogging about it on Fridays. The book is a beautiful book and full of lots of lovely recipes that I cant wait to cook.

The first month’s recipes have been chosen by Dorie herself and today’s recipe is Gougeres, the first recipe in the book. Gougeres are light, savoury choux pastries. They are made using the choux pastry method of boiling butter and water, adding flour and cooking the paste, then beating in eggs and in this case, finally cheese. My sister is staying with us at the moment and we made these together on Wednesday night. They are delicious warm from the oven and would be the perfect thing to have as a pre-dinner nibble with drinks. Hayley and I finished them just before bed time and we ate a couple each and then I popped the rest in the freezer. I will re-heat them in the oven another time when we have people over for drinks.

See what the other FF participants thought of gougeres here.

Baby Food

2010-09-30T11:14:00.000+13:00

My Mum has been saying to me for a while that she bets a lot of my blog readers would be interested in the food I make Harry. I said I think most of my readers are more into the baking side of things than the baby side of things, but I was talking to one of my good friends last week who has two gorgeous little girls and she said she thinks that people would be interested in ideas for baby food. So I have decided to do the odd post about food for babies.

Baking has always been my thing, but since Harry started on solids, I have found that I have a real love of and interest in food for babies. It is very exciting that he is almost 8 months, as a whole new world of food opens as he is able to have cooked milk from then. I actually introduced it a couple of weeks ago, as Harry is off the plunket scale in terms of weight and height, so as he is the size of a one year old, I figured two weeks early would be fine (and in the old days when I was a baby, babies drank whole milk at 6 months old and I am fine!).

There are two recipes I want to share. First is a very easy custard recipe. Tinned baby custard is actually yucky when you compare it to the home made version and the home made version is incredibly quick to make! All you do is combine 125ml of full fat milk in a small microwave jug with 2 tsp corn flour, ½ tsp vanilla, 1 egg yolk and I add ½ tsp sugar. Microwave on high for 1 minute, stir and then microwave again in 10 second bursts until the custard is thick. I then add some pureed fruit to give more sweetness and substance. This is delicious! Pureed pear is particularly nice.

The second recipe I made up in the weekend and is a chicken and cous cous concoction. I put ¼ c cous cous to soak in 1/3 c boiling water, covered and then set aside. I then softened ¼ onion, chopped in a little butter and then added 2 diced free range chicken thighs and browned them. Peel and chop a large kumara (sweet potato) and add to your pot. Cover with water and the juice of an orange and simmer until the kumara is cooked through. Blend the whole lot in a food processor until you get the desired consistency and then mix in your cous cous. It is surprising how tasty this is even without salt. I freeze the mixture in cubes and then bring them out when I need to. I also cook and blend green vegetables, freeze them in ice cubes and then bring out a cube of the required green vegetable to mix with my meat and starch base. Harry loves it!!

Please let me know if this post interested you – and credit to my gorgeous hand model Harry (excuse the blurriness though, as I had to take the photo quickly before he swiped the camera and the container of food!!)

TWD - Tarte Fine

2010-09-28T09:28:00.003+13:00

This week’s TWD recipe is Tarte Fine and was chosen by Leslie of Lethally Delicious. In the book Dorie says that a tarte fine is also known as apple pizza in the States and it is essentially finely sliced apples baked on a flaky pastry base. This isn’t a recipe that I would have chosen to make as while I love apple pie, I love the shortcrust pastry version – but I am not really a lover of flaky pastry.

I actually made this recipe in a hurry last night. I had bought the flaky pastry in the weekend but for some reason didn’t get round to making the tart. I had bought a roll of ready rolled pastry, but then forgot to defrost it, so I ended up putting it in the microwave which I know is a huge no no when it comes to pastry, but it didn’t seem to have any real detrimental effect. I made the variation of the tart and instead of using an egg wash, I brushed the apples with melted butter and sprinkled over sugar. Even though I was sceptical as to whether I would like this tart or not, it was the perfect speedy dessert (it probably took 5 minutes in total to prepare), it was actually delicious with vanilla ice cream. See if the other TWDers enjoyed it here.

Gluten Free for Mum

2010-09-22T11:56:00.003+12:00

My mum is gluten free and when she comes to stay, I like to experiment with different recipes to see if I can make a normal kind of recipe gluten free without having to go and buy fancy flours etc. The easiest way to do this is to pick a recipe that doesn’t have a huge flour quantity in it and then use rice flour and cornfour as a substitute. The peach and white chocolate friands are a good example of that, and because they have a large nut content, even you cant really taste the rice flour in them.

For these gluten free friands, I took my usual friand recipe and simply substituted rice flour for flour. The rest of the recipe is exactly the same. I made the friands in cupcake cases, as even though I have friand tins, I do find it quite frustrating trying to get the cakes out of the tins, and then cleaning the tins is not easy. I used ground macadamia nuts in these friands, but you could use ground almonds instead, and I have also used coconut which is a more cost effective way of making friands. These friands are white chocolate and peach, because that is a combination that my mother loves, but I have also made them with coconut and added raspberries and white chocolate, almond and pear is another good one. If you don’t need to make these little cakes gluten free, just use normal flour.

Gluten Free Peach and White Chocolate Friands

150g butter, melted
6 egg whites, lightly whisked together just to break them up
1 ½ c icing sugar
1 c ground macadamia nuts
1/2c rice flour
150g white chocolate, chopped
1 drained tin of peaches

• Combine the melted butter, egg whites, icing sugar, grounds nuts and rice flour. Stir in the chocolate
• Spoon into friand tins or cupcake cases and top each cake with two slices of peach
• bake at 170c for 25 minutes or until cooked through

TWD - Coffee-Break Muffins

2010-09-21T14:11:00.003+12:00

This week’s TWD recipe is Coffee Break Muffins and was chosen by Rhiani of Chocoholic Anonymous. I try to have muffins in the freezer for my husband for his lunches at all times, so it was appropriate to make these as I needed to make muffins to stock up the freezer in the weekend. The only thing is that neither my husband nor I are coffee drinkers, so I usually wouldn’t purposely make something coffee flavoured. This muffins are quite strongly coffee flavoured as well, using a cup of coffee instead of milk and also having an added tablespoon of espresso powder.

I decided to add chocolate chips to the muffins to give them a little more oomph and to perhaps add something extra to detract a little from the whole coffeeness of the muffins. While the chocolate was a great addition, I must say we were pleasantly surprised by the muffins – the coffee flavour wasn’t strong enough to put off a non coffee drinker. I would make these muffins again as they were really easy (as muffins usually are) and I imagine if I was a coffee drinker they would go well with a cup of coffee. See if the other TWDers agree here.

TWD - Cranberry Upside Downer

2010-09-14T09:58:00.003+12:00

This week’s TWD recipe is Cranberry Upside downer and was chosen by Sabrina of Superfluous. I made this cake for pudding on Saturday night when my Mum and Dad and sister and her partner were staying. The cake was delicious and the 5 of us who ate it (Mum is gluten free) ate two helpings each, demolishing the whole cake! That in itself is testament to how good this cake is.

Cranberries are not a common berry in New Zealand and I only had some in the freezer as I had bought them last Christmas to make cranberry relish and as I was pregnant at the time, I never got round to it. You could easily substitute blueberries or raspberries for the cranberries and Dorie suggests substituting peaches. Peaches would work well, but I liked the berries as it didn’t matter how you placed them, the cake still looked good. Dorie didn’t say to line the bottom of the tin for this up-side down cake, but I did, just to make sure that it came out of the tin easily. We had this cake slightly warm with whipped cream. It was delicious and I would definitely make it again. See if the other TWDers loved it too here.

TWD - Peanutbutter Crisscrosses

2010-09-07T10:52:00.003+12:00

This week’s TWD recipe is peanutbutter criss crosses and was chosen by jasmine of Jasmine Cuisine. This is a recipe I have been wanting to make for a while. Peanutbutter cookies, filled with salted peanuts. Yum! I made a half batch of these – I was going to make the full batch as my sister and 9 year old nephew were meant to be coming up for the weekend to visit from Christchurch, but unfortunately they were flying out on Saturday morning and the earthquake meant that they weren’t able to come. Thankfully for my family, neither my parents nor my two sisters who live there have suffered any material damage, but it has been a very scary few days.

The criss crosses on my cookies don’t really stand out, I think because I accidentally reversed the quantities of baking soda and baking powder, putting in a larger amount of baking powder than baking soda. This meant that the cookies puffed up more rather than staying flat. It made me realise how important the kind of raising agent you use is. The cookies are actually quite crispy – I imagined that they would be a bit more chewy. But they do taste delicious and I will definitely be trying the chocolate version of these as suggested by Dorie.

See what the other TWDers thought here.

TWD - Espresso Chocolate Shortbread

2010-08-31T14:55:00.003+12:00

This week’s TWD recipe is espresso chocolate shortbread and was chosen by Donna of Life’s Too Short not to Eat Dessert. I don’t like coffee but for some reason love espresso shortbread. I have a recipe I have used for years which is just plain espresso shortbread, but I dip the rounds of shortbread in melted dark chocolate.

This recipe is similar to that although uses white sugar instead of the brown sugar my other recipe uses. This recipe also has chocolate in it, but chopped chocolate or chocolate chips throughout the biscuits rather than dipped at the end. This shortbread was delicious! The chocolate chips were great (as anything with chocolate chips is!) and the espresso gave a lovely flavour. I would definitely make these cookies again, and may have to as they lasted only just over 24 hours in my household (I did halve the recipe though!). See what the other TWders thought here.

A blast from the Past

2010-08-25T16:47:00.003+12:00

Last weekend we were invited to friends for brunch. When I asked what to bring, they said muffins. I decided to make a lime version of lemon and poppyseed muffins as a kind friend gave me some limes which was a real treat!

Lemon and poppyseed muffins always remind me of the late 1990s and the whole blue and yellow theme for interiors which was popular at the time. In 1999 my husband to be and I moved into our first home, which was a very small apartment, but it was brand new and we were able to pick the colour scheme, which was a blue and yellow one. We had yellow painted walls, blue carpet and a blue kitchen with a very trendy (at the time) navy benchtop. We also got engaged that year, and many of our engagement presents were in the blue and yellow theme – lots of blue temuka pottery with a yellow trim. In my kitchen I would always have pile of lemons “artfully” displayed on one of my blue platters with the yellow trim – and lemon and poppyseed muffins were a firm favourite for using up the lemons.

The muffins haven’t lost their appeal nearly ten years later. Lime works just as well as lemons – the sourness makes a great contrast for the butteriness of the muffins. These are one muffin that substituting the butter for oil doesn’t give you such a good result –you need the butter to give a crunchy exterior and it really does add to the flavour.

Lime Poppyseed muffins

2 c self raising flour
¾ c sugar
Zest of two limes
2 tbsp poppyseeds
1c milk
75g butter, melted
1 egg

• Combine dry ingredients, then separately combine the milk, butter and egg
• Pour the wet ingredients over the dry and mix gently
• Spoon into muffin cases and bake at 200c for 15-18 minutes or until cooked through
• While still hot spoon over a syrup made by mixing ¼ c sugar with ¼ c lime juice

TWD - peach tart

2010-08-24T13:46:00.003+12:00

This weeks TWD recipe is Crunchy and Custardy Peach Tart and was chosen by Rachel of Sweet Tarte. This posting is short and sweet – a bit like the tart! The tart was very easy to put together – a peach and custard filling in a shortcrust base, topped with a little almond streusel topping. The tart was delicious. I had nothing in the fridge to serve with it (cream would have been perfect) but even unadorned it was lovely. See if the other TWDers loved it too here.

Variation on a theme

2010-08-23T12:24:00.003+12:00

I love my Nana’s chocolate chip cookies – I think it is the condensed milk in them which gives them a delicious crisp but kind of soft texture. Using the chocolate chip cookie recipe as a base, there are lots of variations you can make. While I was on maternity leave I made a delicious variation using chopped dried apricots and cornflakes instead of chocolate chips (even as someone who doesn’t like dried apricots I loved these). Today’s recipe is a chocolate and coconut version.

These are the perfect biscuit for the tins – they freeze really well and while they are delicious, they are plain enough to be good for school lunchboxes (I imagine) and to have on hand as a good stand by. They are quick and easy to make, but their taste belies their easiness.

Speaking of quick and easy, our week day meals have become very quick and easy. I used to spend hours pouring over recipe books deciding what to make for dinner – often making two or three new recipes every meal time. Now that we have Harry, a lot less time is utilised doing this. While I still try and make tasty and interesting meals, they really have to be quick, as mealtimes are a busy time – I get home from work, breast feed Harry, feed him his solids, read him some stories, play with him and make dinner all at once. My husband does do a lot of the prep work which does help of course. An example was last night’s dinner – chicken cooked in a sauce made of ½ c sweet chilli sauce, 3 tbsp soy sauce and 3 tbsp fish sauce, served with hokkein noodles, steamed broccoli and chopped roasted peanuts – definitely delicious but less than thirty minutes to prepare.

Chocolate Coconut Cookies

120g butter
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp condensed milk
2 tbsp cocoa powder
3/4 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
¼ c coconut

• Cream butter and sugar, then beat in condensed milk
• Stir in dry ingredients
• Roll into balls and flatten with a fork
• Bake at 170c for 15 minutes or until firmish and golden

Dream Kisses

2010-08-19T11:57:00.003+12:00

Ever since I got the second Ladies, A Plate book, I have wanted to make this recipe for Dream Kisses. The books are full of old fashioned favourites – I had never actually heard of dream kisses though until I got the book. I don’t seem to have done so much baking lately, as my husband has asked me not to – now that he is at home, if I bake a batch of biscuits, he will eat the whole lot in one day and he reckons it’s not good for his waist line! So, when my in-laws came to stay last week, it was a good opportunity to bake these dream kisses.

Dream kisses are a little like a louise cake made with brown sugar, without jam and with nuts added! The base is simply a shortbread base, but made with brown sugar, then the topping is a combination of eggs, coconut, sugar and walnuts. The recipe didn’t specify what size tin to make the slice in, so I used an 18x25 cm tin. It was actually probably a bit small, but my next size tin which is 20x30cm would probably have been too big. The result being that the topping probably didn’t bake as dry as I would have liked. If I made these again, I think I would still bake them in the smaller tin, but use only 2 eggs in the topping. They were delicious and a hit with my in-laws (and my husband!). The other thing I did differently was that I creamed the butter and sugar in the base, rather than making it in the food processor – mostly because I am too lazy to clean the food processor!

Dream Kisses (from Ladies, A Plate, a Second Helping)

100g brown sugar
250g flour
170g butter

• Cream the butter and sugar. Stir in the flour and press the dough into a greased and lined tin (see above for sizing)
• Bake at 180c for 15-20 minutes. Allow to cool slightly before putting on the topping below

3 eggs
200g brown sugar
70g coconut
100g walnuts, chopped
1 tbsp flour
1 tsp baking powder

• Whisk together the sugar and eggs, then stir in the remaining ingredients
• Pour over the warm base and bake at 180c for a further 20-25 minutes

TWD - Oatmeal Breakfast Bread (muffins)

2010-08-17T09:27:00.003+12:00

This week’s TWD recipe is Oatmeal Breakfast Bread and was chosen by Natalie of Oven Love. I actually made this recipe into muffins, as I had limited time and as loaves take a while to bake, I thought I would shortcut the time by making muffins.

This recipe is a relatively “healthy” one. It has comparatively little fat in it, moistness and flavour being created with apple sauce. I didn’t take a special trip to buy apple sauce (it’s not such a common ingredient in NZ as it seems to be in the States), but of course I do have loads of cans of baby apples in my pantry at the moment (I buy canned fruit for Harry, but cook my own everything else), so I used baby apples for the apple sauce component of the recipe. The recipe made twelve muffins – lovely muffins, full of oats, a touch of spice with a lovely walnut cinnamon crumble on top.

I would definitely recommend these as a very quick and easy to make, but delicious muffin. I am sure the loaf version would be delicious as well. See if the other TWDers agree here.

Oatmeal and Raisin Cookies

2010-08-12T16:20:00.002+12:00

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for some easy biscuits to make to take to a friends place. I didn’t have any chocolate chips (having a stay at home husband means that sometimes the chocolate chips are eaten simply as a snack!), so couldn’t make my good old favourite, chocolate chip cookies. Instead I found a recipe in Rachel Allen’s book “Bake” for these oat and raisin cookies. I also didn’t have raisins, but I did have sultanas and dried apricots, so I substituted those.

These cookies were delicious – they even tasted vaguely healthy because of the large quantity of oats in them. They had a very pleasant crisp but slightly chewy texture that I really loved. The original recipe had 2 tbsp of water in it, but I found I didn’t need that, so left it out. I would definitely make these cookies again and I can imagine when Harry gets older, these will make a great lunch box treat. And, if your husband doesn’t eat all the chocolate chips, they would make a great addition to these cookies!

Raisin and Oatmeal Cookies (adapted from Bake by Rachel Allen)

110g butter
110g sugar
110g brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
250g rolled oats
110g self raising flour
110g raisins (or chopped dried apricots, sultanas or chocolate chips)

• Cream the butter and the two sugars. Beat in the egg and then the vanilla.
• Stir in the dry ingredients
• Place rough balls of the mixture onto trays and bake at 170c for 15-20 minutes

TWD - Chocolate Ganache Ice Cream

2010-08-10T12:27:00.002+12:00

This week’s TWD recipe is Chocolate Ganache Ice –Cream and was chosen by Katrina of Baking and Boys. This ice cream was very easy to make – basically you made chocolate ganache, then made custard, combined the two, chilled and then churned in the ice cream maker. I used energy chocolate (which is about 50% cocoa butter I think) which resulted in a rather mild chocolate flavour. But the ice-cream was lovely and creamy. My in laws are staying at the moment and we had the ice-cream for pudding last night with some little banana puddings I quickly whipped up. The combination of banana and chocolate was delicious. The puddings were very easy to make and the recipe is below.

Check out the other TWDers chocolate ganache ice-cream here.

Banana Puddings (adapted from Donna Hay)

5 tbsp sugar
5 tbsp maple syrup
1 c self raising flour
2 eggs
2 mashed bananas
100g butter, melted

• Combine all ingredients in a bowl
• Spoon into four greased ramekins and bake at 170c for 25-30 minutes or until cooked through

The Best Chocolate Brownie

2010-08-09T09:04:00.003+12:00

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you will know that I like to try all sorts of new recipes. But, I do have a brownie recipe that I usually use when I am making a bulk amount of brownie that I want to turn out in a particular way. It is a variation of a recipe found the in the first Zarbo cook book. I think I have found an even better brownie recipe now and it comes from the second Ladies, A Plate book.

A good friend’s younger sister died last week - an incredibly sad time for my friend and her family. I wanted to bake something for my friend that was a yummy treat, but one that she could put in the freezer and bring out at a later stage when she wanted to. Brownie definitely fits the bill for this kind of thing – it is quick and easy to prepare, makes a very tasty treat and can be easily frozen as it has no icing to worry about and wont go soft or change texture upon being defrosted. The recipe uses only chocolate – my previous “go to” recipe used cocoa as well and I used to think that is what made it so delicious. I used 70% chocolate for the recipe. It does have a lot of chocolate in it, but the result is a deliciously fudgey brownie and that is the way I like my brownie.

I added chopped walnuts as recommended and also more chopped chocolate as recommended, but I did use 55% cocoa chocolate for the chocolate add ins. This is my new go to recipe and while I share the recipe here, I do encourage you to buy the book, as it is fabulous.

Chocolate Brownie (from Ladies, A Plate, a second helping)

225g dark chocolate
85g butter
180g sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
55g flour
55-115g walnuts, chopped
55g dark chocolate chopped (extra)

• Melt together the chocolate and butter
• Whisk in the sugar (the mixture will go grainy) and the eggs, one at a time, then lastly the vanilla
• Stir in the flour, then nuts and extra chocolate
• Bake in a lined 20cm square tin at 170c for 30-35 minutes

Chocolate Muffins

2010-08-05T11:23:00.006+12:00

I wanted to bake something for our neighbour last week and decided on these chocolate muffins. I would usually have baked cupcakes, but as a full time working mother, cupcakes are a bit tricky these days - I would get to back the cupcakes, but then I wouldn’t be able to stay up late enough to ice them and then the mornings are a rush by the time I get up at 5.30, do some exercise, feed Harry and get myself ready for work – no time for icing! So, muffins it was!

These muffins are double chocolate. They are essentially plain chocolate muffins with a dollop of chocolate ganache in the centre. Quick and easy to make, as muffins are, but just slightly fancier with the filling. This recipe came from Alyson Gofton’s book, Bake. If I was going to bake them again I would add more cocoa to the mixture, or use dutched cocoa – they just weren’t dark enough for me. The ganache centres were a nice surprise though.

Double Chocolate Muffins (Alyson Gofton)

125g dark chocolate
¼ c cream

• Heat cream and add chocolate. Stir to combine and set aside to firm up

1 3/4c flour
½ c sugar
¼ c cocoa
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ c plain yoghurt
½ c milk
1 egg
75g melted butter

• Combine dry ingredients
• Whisk together yoghurt, milk, egg and melted butter and pour into dry ingredients. Mix just to combine
• Spoon half mixture into muffin cases, top with a spoonful of the set aside ganache and then top with the remaining muffin mixture.
• Bake at 200c for 15-18 minutes

TWD - Gingered Carrot Cookies

2010-08-03T11:03:00.003+12:00

This week’s TWD recipe is gingered carrot cookies and was chosen by Natalia of Gatti Fili e Farina. These are very interesting cookies – Dorie describes them as being almost scone like, but I am not so sure and wonder whether that description gets lost in translation between American and English definitions of scones, biscuits and cookies!

I halved the cookie mixture, but still used one full egg. The cookies turn out to be knobbly little things – they don’t really taste carroty (but then neither does carrot cake). I also didn’t find the ginger flavour that pronounced. I also left out the raisins as I don’t like raisins. The thing I likes best about them was the pecan nuts. I love pecan nuts and find they make a great addition to lots of things (in fact I added the leftover pecans with cumin seeds, currants and diced preserved limes to cous cous we had for dinner with roasted salmon – they made a delicious addition). I wouldn’t make these cookies again. Even though they tasted ok, they don’t look great and I am not sure that they will keep so well. See what the other TWDers thought here.

Decorated Shortbread

2010-07-29T16:21:00.002+12:00

I have to confess that these are cookies I made some time ago (actually before Harry was born!) and never blogged about. They are some very simple biscuits made to look quite lovely (I think!) with a bit of easy decorating. These are the perfect cookie to give as a gift and they can be adapted to any situation.

The cookies are quite simply shortbread biscuits, cut into rounds, dipped in white chocolate and a royal icing flower popped on top. If I remember rightly, these particular shortbread had chopped pistachios through them (just add chopped pistachios to your favourite shortbread recipe). I used white chocolate to ice them (in fact white chocolate melts) as they leave a nice clean finish plus chocolate melts set really quickly and don’t even often dent like icing does, if you are packaging them up to send them. I did make the icing flowers which not everyone can do, but you can buy icing flowers from the supermarket now, or you can use other things to decorate – pebbles or smarties, other cake decorating embellishments, jaffas or other lollies, even just sprinkled with hundreds and thousands, these cookies would look great.

You could also colour the white chocolate. You have to be careful using other liquid with chocolate as it can seize, but I have had success with adding a little gel colour to white chocolate. Dipping the cookies is easy too – just dip them! You can use a palette knife to spread the chocolate on, but dipping works really well. I would love to know what other ideas you come up with.

Almost dairy free

2010-07-28T16:54:00.003+12:00

I was looking through some recipes for something easy to bake a few weeks ago and came across this recipe for making chocolate chip cookies with oil rather than butter. I thought I would try them as an almost dairy free option (they would be dairy free if you left out the chocolate!). They were in a book by Sue Lawrence who won Masterchef UK a while back. When I bought the book some time ago, the masterched phenomenon had not reached NZ, so I didn’t really realise what a big deal it was. Now I would like to find out a bit more about Sue Lawrence.

These cookies are definitely not the best cookies I have ever made. They made me realise that the thing I like most about a good cookie is the buttery flavour. But these cookies would be a good thing to make for a dairy free friend (leave out the chocolate) or if you wanted to bake something but had run out of butter (as does happen sometimes). I used rice bran oil, but canola oil would be a good substitute. Don’t leave out the salt – you need that to bring out the flavour of the cookies

Chocolate Cookies (adapted from Sue Lawrence recipe)

1 1/4 c flour
¼ c cocoa
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
1/3 c brown sugar
¼ c castor sugar
1/2c oil
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla
2/3 c chocolate chips

• Whisk together oil, egg and sugars, then stir in remaining ingredients
• Place small mounds onto baking tray and bake at 175c for 15 minutes. Leave to cool on trays for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack

TWD - Chewy Chunky Blondie

2010-07-27T08:46:00.003+12:00

This week’s TWD recipe is chewy chunky blondies and was chosen by Nicole of Cookies on Fridays. I think of blondies being brownies made with white chocolate, but these blondies were rich, fudgey bars with delicious add ins in the form of chocolate, walnuts and toffee pieces – no white chocolate in sight.

I loved this recipe as it was easy to make and had great taste results. I halved the recipe and made it in a 20cm square tin. Next time I would make the whole recipe though as the blondies are so delicious. They were almost like a soft chocolate chunk cookie made in a tin. The add ins of dark chocolate, walnuts and toffee bits were delicious. You cant get Heath’s toffee pieces in NZ, so I smashed up some werther original toffees which have the same effect. The recipe also called for coconut – I actually left that out, as even though I like coconut, I think it would have detracted from the other flavours.

The blondies were delicious – I would definitely make these again. Check out the other TWD links here.

TWD rewind - Brrrownies

2010-07-23T15:11:00.003+12:00

Last week’s TWD recipe was Brrrrownies – the extra “rrrr”s in the word brownies, referring to the fact that the brownies have chunks of peppermint patties in them and have that “brrrr” flavour to them that peppermint things tend to have. We don’t have peppermint patties in NZ and I was curious to know what would be the next best thing. I googled images of peppermint patties and also asked a friend who has spent quite a bit of time in the states – it seems that the closest thing to peppermint patties would be after dinner mints, so I bought a packet and started baking.

The brownie recipe is a straight forward one and made a lovely rich, fudgey brownie. The addition of after dinner mints (in my case) is inspired! I chopped the mints in half and folded them into the brownie mixture which resulted in the mints melting into the brownie leaving the occasional glimpse of white. I loved these brownies – the mint flavour was enough to make the brownies have a very fresh taste which was welcoming against the richness of the chocolate brownie. I cut the brownie into smallish pieces, freezing most of it, but I have to be honest and say that the brownie also tasted very good frozen and it didn’t last long in our house (in fact I think it was less than 24 hours!)

The only thing holding me back from making these time and time again is the cost of after dinner mints – I used a whole box and a box costs over $6. By the time you add in the cost of the chocolate for the brownie mixture and then the other ingredients you are looking at somewhere around $10 which is ok for a pudding you may take somewhere, but a bit expensive for an everyday piece of baking to have in the tins. You should try them though – you can find the recipe here.

TWD - Lots of Ways Banana Cake

2010-07-21T08:59:00.003+12:00

This week’s TWD recipe is lots of ways banana cake and was chosen by Kimberly of Only Creative Opportunities. This name of this cake is pretty self explanatory – it is a very versatile banana cake that can be made using a variety of ingredients, depending on what you have on hand. The recipe makes two 22cm round cakes which can be sandwiched together. I halved the recipe and made one cake, leaving it plain so I could cut it into wedges and freeze it for husband for the week (although I imagine that this cake would be a good keeper).

I stuck to the suggestion of adding thread coconut to the banana cake. This made the cake extremely moist. Other suggested add ins were dried fruit, other nuts and I bet chocolate chips would be nice too. I didn’t have any coconut milk, so I used sour cream as my liquid component, but you could also substitute buttermilk or natural yoghurt. Dorie flavoured her cake with rum or Malibu – I don’t like rum, so just added some coconut essence (I wouldn’t have added this if I had used coconut cream to make the cake). This was an easy cake to make, but also very easy cake to eat. I think we ate about 1/3 of it warm straight from the oven unadorned. As I mentioned, the rest went in the freezer, but it would be great served as a dessert with whipped cream, or even iced with a coconut flavoured icing and topped with more coconut. I would definitely make this cake again.

See if the other TWDers enjoyed the cake here.

Milk Chocolate and Hazelnut Cookies

2010-07-16T12:34:00.001+12:00

At the end of last year I bough a beautiful book called Manna from Heaven by Rachel Grisewood. She writes beautifully and the book is a collection of recipes and stories. The recipes are eclectically gathered together, so you will find cakes and desserts in amongst recipes for savoury dishes. If I was going to write a recipe book, I think I would adopt this style and have the chapters assembled by way of occasion.

I actually haven’t made a lot of the recipes in the book yet, but one of the recipes that caught my eye early on was that for Milk chocolate and hazelnut cookies. The occasion rose to make the cookies last week when I bought a cake of milk chocolate for a school fundraiser. If I didn’t use the chocolate in baking, I was going to be in danger of eating the whole cake myself (and even though I try and convince myself that I need the calories for breastfeeding I really don’t!), so I took the opportunity to make these cookies.

I love these kind of cookies – I think it is the fact that they don’t have any kind of raising agent in them – that seems to make them more dense and crumbly, not too crisp and yet not too soft. The chunks of milk chocolate went perfectly with the hazelnuts and the vanilla hit was noticeable. I would definitely make these again.

Milk chocolate and Hazelnut Cookies (from Manna from Heaven by Rachel Grisewood)

80g hazelnuts, toasted and chopped
125g butter
100g sugar
1 tsp vanilla paste
1 egg yolk
210g flour
140g milk chocolate, chopped

• Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the vanilla paste and egg yolk.
• Stir in the flour and then the chopped hazelnuts and chocolate.
• Roll the dough into a log, refrigerate for an hour, then slice into rounds (relatively thickly) and bake at 160c for 10-15 minutes

TWD - shortcake rewind

2010-07-14T15:09:00.002+12:00

I haven’t made this week’s TWD recipe yet – we were in Chch for a few days visiting my family and the time just got away on me. But last week before we left I did do a TWD rewind, making these tender shortcakes. These are very light, flaky almost scone like shortcakes which were split in half when cooled, filled with whipped cream and in my case, jam. The recipe in the book showed fresh berries with the shortcakes, but being the middle of winter in NZ at the moment, fresh berries are not that easy to find! My version is a take on scones with jam and whipped cream.

As usual, I scaled the recipe back to make a half batch which was three rather large shortcakes. My husband and I shared one for pudding and he had the other two the next day. I added a little cinnamon to the basic mix which made the shortcakes slightly fragrant. These shortcakes were quick and easy, but delicious and I would definitely make them again. You can find the recipe here.

TWD - Tarte Noire

2010-07-06T15:14:00.003+12:00

This week’s TWD recipe is tarte noire and was chosen by Dharmagirl of Bliss. Tarte noire is a simple chocolate tart – a shortcrust base filled with a rich chocolate ganache. I chose to make my shortcrust base chocolate as well, making this tart truly noire!

I wanted to only make enough tart for my husband and I, so while I made the full amount of pastry, I froze about 2/3 of it and used the remainder to line two small tart tins. I divided the ganache mixture into about ¼. Dorie said to choose a chocolate that you like the flavour of as that is what the tart filling would end up tasting like. I chose good old energy chocolate which is a very milk dark chocolate. I quite like dark chocolate, but find the 70% stuff just a little bitter for my tastes. The energy chocolate is about 50% I think and it made a very pleasing, smooth ganache.

We ate our tarts for pudding on Saturday night, having them with natural yoghurt which tempered the richness a little. This is a simple way of making an elegant tart. See what the other TWDers thought here.

An old favourite

2010-07-02T09:58:00.003+12:00

Last Sunday I was looking for something to bake simply as a tin filler. I have sworn off chocolate for two weeks (since having had Harry I have been eating crazy amounts of chocolate – I think it must be good breastfeeding fuel!!), but of course that is just actual chocolate, not chocolate flavoured things, so I was looking for something chocolatey to fill the tins. I had a look through some of my old recipe books and then remembered one of my favourite recipes from when I was growing up – coconut rough slice! The recipe came from a friend of my Mum’s and Mum used to make it regularly when we were kids.

The slice has a basic chocolate coconut base – very easy, you just melt the butter and add it to the dry ingredients. The topping is what makes this slice special – it is a beautifully smooth chocolate/coconut topping that is reminiscent of chocolate flavoured coconut ice. The trick with this slice is to put the topping on the base while the base is still hot – otherwise, the topping may not adhere to the base and you end up with a yummy base and a yummy topping, but not in the same mouthful! If you can wait, I would wait and cut this slice the day after making it – it cuts better when it’s not really fresh (it can be a bit crumbly when really fresh). This slice also lasts really well, if you don’t eat it all quickly!

Coconut Rough Slice

1/2c sugar
3 tbsp cocoa
2 tsp baking powder
½ c coconut
2 c flour
250g butter, melted

• Combine dry ingredients, pour in melted butter and combine. Press into a lined 23cm square tin and bake at 180c for 20 minutes
• When still warm out of the oven, top with the following topping:

50g butter
3 tbsp cocoa
6 tbsp condensed milk
2 c coconut
2 tsp vanilla
1 ½ c icing sugar

• Combine all ingredients over a low heat until smooth

Floral Cake

2010-07-01T09:18:00.004+12:00

Quite some time ago I ripped a recipe out of a Delicious magazine for a lavender poppyseed cake with an orange blossom honey syrup. It sounded amazing and very floral! In fact I couldn’t really imagine what it would taste like. But, it captured my imagination as I love syrup cakes, love poppyseeds and have a slight obsession with buying unusual ingredients and then not really using them (such as culinary lavender!!). I decided to make this cake for book club at my house last week, as now that I am a full time working, business owning mother as opposed to simply a full time working business owner, making a cake on a week night is a real achievement, let alone icing or decorating it! At least with a syrup cake there is no real need to ice it!
The cake was very easy to make – a simple cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs and dry ingredients cake. The lavender was meant to be rubbed into the sugar and then sifted out. Because I was using culinary lavender – ie already dried and ready to cook, I simply rubbed the lavender into the sugar and left it at that. The lavender flavour only ended up being a hint of lavender. I’m not sure if that was because the other flavours over powered the lavender or because it is a while since I bought the lavender and it may have lost its strength.

Once the cake was cooked and came out of the oven warmed orange blossom flavoured honey is poured over the cake. I didn’t have any orange blossom flavoured honey, so I added orange blossom water to taste to my honey and then poured it over the cake. The honey I used was a mild tawhiri honey. I am not a huge fan of honey so I prefer the more mild honeys. The cake had yummy flavours – it was probably a little dry around the edges and could have done with a bit more honey to make it more moist. I served it with whipped cream. An unusual cake, but one that I would make again.

Lavender and orange blossom honey cake (adapted from Delicious magazine)

1 tbsp culinary lavender seeds
125g sugar
250g butter
4 eggs
250g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp poppy seeds
1/3 c honey
1-2 tbsp orange blossom water to taste

• Cream butter, sugar and lavender
• Beat in eggs, one at a time then fold in flour, baking powder and poppyseeds
• Pour into lined 24cm springform tin and bake at 160c for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean
• Cool cake, then warm together the honey and orange blossom water and pour over the cake

TWD - Lime Drenched Loaf Cake

2010-06-29T09:48:00.002+12:00

This week’s TWD recipe is rum drenched vanilla loaf cakes and was chosen by Wendy of Pink Stripes (one of my favourite bloggers). I don’t like rum at all, so I decided to make a variation of one of the suggested variations – I made lime drenched vanilla loaf cakes. Actually, I made a loaf cake, singular. I only have one loaf pan and only needed one cake so I easily halved the recipe to make just one loaf.
This was an interesting recipe as the liquid ingredient was cream. I didn’t have any cream and forgot to get some on the way home from work, so instead just used milk, which worked just as well. The recipe called for a vanilla bean instead of vanilla extract – I used some vanilla sugar that I always have on hand. I have a jar that I throw any used vanilla pods into and keep topping it up with sugar. The sugar is beautifully infused with vanilla fragrance. The flavouring of choice (in my case lime juice) was also added to the cake mix.
Once the cake came out of the oven, a cooled syrup (in my case lime syrup) was poured over the cake. We ate a slice of loaf each while it was still fairly warm and delicious. It was incredibly moist and the vanilla and lime flavours worked so well together – I think lime goes with vanilla even better than lemon does, as limes have quite a floral undertone. I am sure that the loaf keeps well, but ours didn’t get the chance, as we ate the whole loaf the next day. This would have to be one of my favourite TWD recipes. See what the others thought here.

Tan Slice - an old favourite

2010-06-25T14:56:00.004+12:00

Tan slice is another old favourite of mine. I absolutely love caramel slice of any kind, but there is something about tan slice - you can keep eating it without it ever seeming to be too rich. As I mentioned, my youngest sister was up last weekend and she loves caramel slice as much as me. I hadn’t had a lot of time to bake for her arrival, but on Saturday morning I made tan slice as a weekend treat for us. The other thing I love about making it, is that you don’t have to ice it, so it is fast to make.
I have mentioned on my blog before that my key to tan slice is to make a lovely, thick caramel so that there is a good ratio of caramel to base, and also to slightly under cook it so that you have a gooey, soft, unctuous slice rather than one that is a bit crisp or crumbly or where the caramel flavour has disappeared and it all tastes just a bit burnt. Tan slice isn’t the most elegant looking caramel slice around, but it is great to have in the tins – if it makes it that far!!

Tan Slice
180g butter
90g sugar
½ tsp vanilla
300g flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2c chocolate chips

• Cream butter and sugar, then stir in vanilla.
• Stir in dry ingredients
• Press 2/3 of the mixture into a lined 23cm square tin, pour over the following caramel, mix the rest of the base mixture with the chocolate chips and crumble over the caramel
• Bake at 180c for 20-25 minutes

Caramel

1 x 400g tin condensed milk
100g butter
2 tbsp golden syrup

• Combine all ingredients in a small pot and heat, stirring until melted together and thickened

TWD - Dressy Chocolate Loaf Cake

2010-06-22T11:25:00.003+12:00

It’s been a while, but at long last here is a TWD post! This week’s recipe is dressy chocolate loaf cake and was chosen by Amy of Amy Ruth Bakes. I was looking forward to making this recipe as I thought it may have been reminiscent of both the chocolate banana loaf which was a TWD recipe and was perhaps one of my favourite TWD recipes, and also a chocolate loaf cake in Nigella Lawson’s book, Feast, which is just divine. Unfortunately, I didn’t really think that this loaf cake was as good as either of those recipes.

I halved the recipe for the loaf cake to make 6 mini loaves and they may have been my mistake. No-one else probably noticed, but to me they were too cakey and not dense enough – I think I was after something a bit more fudgey. The dressy part of the recipe is that the loaf cake was then split into three, filled with cherry jam, re-assembled and then covered in a chocolate and sour cream glaze. To be honest, the highlight for me was the glaze – I loved how glossy the sour cream made the chocolate and even though I had slightly over heated my chocolate, I kept stirring like Dorie said to and the glaze came together beautifully. I also liked how the sour cream made a slightly less rich topping than usual ganache.
This cake was nice, but I don’t think it had any WOW factor. See what the other TWDers thought here.

Catching up With Dorie - ALmost Fudge Gateau

2010-06-21T10:46:00.003+12:00

In the last four months while I havent been blogging, I have still been doing most of the TWD challenges each week. However, I haven’t been completely on to it and have about 12 recipes I need to try as a catch up. There are also about 5 recipes that were baked before I became a TWD member that I have to catch up on. This recipe, Almost Fudge Gateau, is one of those.

My sister was staying with us in the weekend and I made the almost fudge gateau for our pudding on Saturday night. I halved the recipe, and made two 10cm gateaux and there was enough mixture left to fill 6 cupcake cases. The gateau is very light and simple to make. It is almost like a soufflé cake, as you fold in beaten egg whites to lighten the mixture, and the cakes puffed up then deflated upon cooling. There was an optional ganache to go on top of the cakes. I didn’t make that on Saturday night, instead serving our gateaux with whipped cream, but yesterday I made a little ganache for this week’s TWD challenge and put some of it on top of one of the cupcake size gateaux – delicious!!

Almost-Fudge Gateau
Ingredients:
For the cake:
5 large eggs
9 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 cup sugar
5 tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into chunks
2 tbsp. coffee or water
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
For the glaze:
4 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tsp. light corn syrup
Directions:
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9-inch springform pan, line the bottom with parchment paper, butter the paper, dust the inside of the pan with flour and tap out the excess. Place the pan on a baking sheet.
Separate the eggs, putting the whites in a mixer bowl or other large bowl and the yolks in a small bowl.
Set a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and add the chocolate, sugar, butter and coffee. Stir occasionally until the chocolate and butter are melted; the sugar may still be grainy – that is fine. Transfer the bowl to the counter and let the mixture sit for 3 minutes. Using a rubber spatula, stir in the yolks one by one, then fold in the flour. Working with the whisk attachment of the mixer, beat the egg whites with the pinch of salt until they hold firm but glossy peaks. Using the spatula, stir about one quarter of the beaten whites in to the batter, then gently fold in the rest. Scrape the batter into the pan and jiggle the pan from side to side a couple of times to even the batter.
Bake for 35-45 minutes, or until the cake has risen evenly (it might rise around the edges and you’ll think it’s done, but give it a few minutes more, and the center will puff too) and the top has firmed (it will probably be cracked) and doesn’t shimmy when tapped; a thin knife inserted into the center should come out just slightly streaked with chocolate. Transfer the pan to a cooling rack and let the cake rest for 5 to 10 minutes.
Run a blunt knife gently around the edges of the cake and remove the sides of the pan. Carefully turn the cake over onto a rack and remove the pan bottom and the parchment paper. Invert the cake onto another rack and cool to room temperature right side up. As the cake cools, it may sink.
To make the glaze, turn the cooled cake onto another rack so you’ll be glazing the flat bottom, and place the rack over a baking sheet lined with parchment or wax paper to catch any drips.
Put the chocolate in a small heatproof bowl. Melt the chocolate over a pan of simmering water or in a microwave oven – the chocolate should be just melted and only warm, not hot. Meanwhile, bring the cream to a boil in a small saucepan. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and stir very gently with a rubber spatula until the mixture is smooth and shiny. Stir in the corn syrup.
Pour the glaze over the cake and smooth the top with a long metal icing spatula. Don’t worry if the glaze drips unevenly down the sides of the cake, it will add to its charm. Allow the glaze to set at room temperature, or slip the cake into the refrigerator for about 20 minutes.

Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes

2010-06-18T15:21:00.004+12:00

In the weekend we had friends over for lunch. I made these little chocolate cherry cupcakes for our dessert. Lunch was pot luck – a good way of doing things when you have a baby and limited time. I bought some bread, made a big green salad and a chicken filo pie and our friends bought lasagne and a paella, both of which were delicious. The recipe for the cakes is one I adapted from a Julie Le Clerc recipe for a chocolate cherry bundt cake. I didn’t have morello cherries like the recipe called for and also didn’t have all the ground almonds that the recipe required, so I reduced the ground almond in take and upped the four, and used the cherries I had in the pantry.

You could make these cakes with frozen raspberries rather than the cherries and you could add chunks of chocolate, white or dark. The cherries actually mashed up a bit when I folded them through, which kind of gives my cakes more of a cherry swirl look – you could swirl good quality cherry jam through to get a similar effect. I decorated the tops of the cakes with simply whipped cream with a little vanilla bean paste added and sprinkled pink sprinkles on top and added an icing flower. So simple, but so effective!

Chocolate and Cherry Cupcakes (adapted from Julie Le Clerc)

125g butter
¾ c sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
3/4c ground almonds
½ c sour cream
1c self raising flour
1/2c flour
¼ c cocoa
1 can cherries, drained

• Cream butter and sugar and then add in vanilla. Beat in eggs, one at a time
• Stir in almonds and sour cream, then remaining dry ingredients, lastly folding through the cherries
• Spoon into cupcake cases and bake at 180c for 20-25 minutes
• Once cold top with whipped cream and decorate

Coconut Cupcakes

2010-06-16T13:08:00.001+12:00

Our next door neighbours have just had a baby girl and what better way to celebrate than with some little pink cupcakes. I haven’t made that many cupcakes since harry was born – cookies seem to be the easiest thing to make with limited time. I did actually make some cupcakes for the time I hosted coffee group at my house, but I had to leave them un-iced, as I completely ran out of time to decorate them!

These cupcakes are coconut cupcakes. The recipe is scaled down to make 12 miniature sized cupcakes. I have iced them simply with a glace icing (icing sugar and water tinted pink) which meant that I didn’t have to spend a lot of time decorating them. The cakes are lovely and moist – not a lot of coconut, but just enough to give that lovely nutty texture. I sprinkled thread coconut over the top to give an indication of what is inside. The cupakes keep rally well (I think the coconut helps with that) and making mini versions means that you can have two without feeling greedy!

Coconut Cupcakes

60g butter
½ tsp coconut essence
½ c sugar
1 egg
1/4c coconut
¾ c self raising flour
½ c yoghurt
3 tbsp milk

• Cream butter, essence and sugar
• Beat in egg, then stir in dry ingredients, yoghurt and milk
• Spoon into cupcake cases and bake at 160c for 20-222 minutes
• Once cold ice with a simple icing made with icing sugar and water, tinted pink. Sprinkle with thread coconut

I am back blogging....

2010-06-11T16:17:00.001+12:00

Well, it has certainly been some time since I last blogged. Life is certainly a lot busier being a Mum and now I am a full time working Mum as well, going to back to my role as partner in my law firm six weeks ago. We are lucky in that my husband is staying home to look after Harry. Harry is an absolutely adorable baby – he is such a good boy and is just gorgeous! We are very spoiled parents!!

I have been baking over the last few months and keeping up with most of the Dorie challenges, but finding time to blog has been hard. So, I cant promise that I will be a consistent blogger like I was, but I will try to blog a few times a week. One of the things I have been baking the most is my Nana’s chocolate chip cookies. These are the biscuits that were photographed in the article about bloggers which my blog featured in in the Sunday Star Times back in December. I love chocolate chip cookies and these are the perfect thing to be able to make very quickly and they also freeze really well, actually tasting pretty delicious from frozen.

My parents are coming to visit in the weekend and so I did a little baking last night, making the ever delicious chocolate chip cookies. I didn’t have any chocolate chips, so I used a 220g cake of energy chocolate, chopped which made the cookies delicious. If you havent tried this recipe, you must – I look forward to receiving your comments!

Nana’s chocolate chip cookies

240g butter
4 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp condensed milk (I use an everyday tbsp to measure the sugar and condensed milk rather than a proper measuring one)
2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
¾ c chocolate chips or 220g dark chocolate, chopped

• Cream butter and sugar, adding in condensed milk
• Stir in dry ingredients and then chocolate
• Roll into balls and flatten with a fork
• Bake at 165c for 15-18 minutes
• Cool on racks

It's a Boy!

2010-02-24T09:50:00.003+13:00

Harry William McLeod was born on 5 February at 12.30pm. He is the most gorgeous little boy and we are adoring being parents. Baking and blogging is taking a back seat at the moment while I cherish every moment with my wee man. I am still doing my Dorie challenges, I just havent blogged about them.... yet!

Please keep checking on me though as I will be back soon

Tammy

Blogging Holiday

2010-01-27T10:56:00.001+13:00

Sorry there havent been any postings for some time. I have been trying to get everything done before the baby arrives (due next week). I have been keeping up with my TWD baking, but havent got round to posting yet. Please be patient with me over the next few weeks as my life changes!! I promise to keep posting, but I can't promise to be as regular as I was once was :0)

I will post a TWD catch up either later today or tomorrow

Tammy :0)

LBD of puddings

2010-01-13T11:03:00.003+13:00

This white chocolate and hazelnut blondie is actually something I made prior to Christmas for a team lunch. Brownie/blondie is always a good thing to make when you want to make a dessert in advance and also something that you can dress up or dress down – kind of like the little black dress of puddings.

I actually prefer brownie to blondie. I do love white chocolate but it can be a bit cloying when baked into something. This blondie was a little different in that it had chopped hazelnuts in it. I served it with a berry sauce (a bought one – my sister is a school teacher and last year the seniors made and sold berry sauce as part of a young enterprise scheme. The sauce is delicious, although quite tart) which was a nice contrast to the sweetness of the white chocolate blondie. But, I must say, I would have preferred a true brownie with chunks of white chocolate in it. Still, it’s always good to try new things.

So, the dolled up version of the blondie is with the berry sauce. The everyday version is cut into wedges and put into my husband’s lunch box.

The blondie recipe was in Dish magazine and you can find it here.

TWD - Mrs Vogel's Scherben

2010-01-12T10:01:00.003+13:00

This week’s TWD recipe is Mrs Vogel’s Scherben and was chosen by Teanna of Spork or Foon. I have to confess, looking through the whole Baking from my Home to Yours book, this recipe is probably the last recipe I would pick to make – mainly because the cookies are deep fried. And, in fact, I was very close to not making these until I read that others had brushed the dough with oil and baked in a hot oven. I decided to do that too.

I halved the recipe to make just enough scherben to taste. They are almost like strips of unsweetened shortcrust pastry, dusted with cinnamon sugar and icing sugar at the end. My husband and I ate one each, but I threw the rest out as they are the kind of thing that even though you don’t really like them, they are strangely compelling to eat. I wont be making these again, but am still happy that I didn’t decide to completely give them a miss.

See what the other TWDers thought here.

TWD - holiday catch up

2010-01-11T12:49:00.005+13:00

Well, not only have I been a slack blogger over the Christmas break, I have also been a slack baker! It has been a busy but relaxing Christmas period and I have been doing lots of reading and resting, quite focussed on the arrival of our wee one, and not so much baking.

I did do the last two TWD recipes. I made the low and luscious chocolate cheesecake for Christmas day. It made the perfect accompaniment to the other puddings I made which were individual pavlovas, red and green jellies, strawberry trifle and lots of fresh strawberries. The cheesecake was very rich and made a rather large cheesecake, but with 11 of us for Christmas, we ate the whole thing over a couple of days. I actually made the base with arnotts rice biscuits to make it gluten free so my Mum could eat it too.

I have to confess I only made the cocoa buttemilk birthday cake yesterday afternoon and my husband and I had a small piece each as a last holiday treat. The cake was baked for the second anniversary of TWD – we could choose between the cake and tarte tatin. Tarte tatin is not one of my favourite puddings, so I opted for the cake. I actually halved the recipe and made the cake in little oval tins. Half the recipe still made a rather substantial cake.

I didn’t fill the cake with the buttercream Dorie suggested, but simply filled it with whipped cream flavoured with icing sugar and vanilla. Dorie is right, this is a great cake! It’s denser than a sponge, but still light enough to taste fabulous with whipped cream. I will definitely be making this cake again.

You can see what the other TWDers thought of this recipe here.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-23T14:34:00.002+13:00

Pregnancy has slowed down the treat making this Christmas! So not much to show. I did make some fudge, individual Christmas cakes and shortbread, but it was all in a rush and I even forgot to take photos!! But I did want to take this opportnity to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a happy and successful 2010!!

Finally some Christmas treats!!

2009-12-17T15:13:00.006+13:00

While I wont be making many wee treats for Christmas gifts this year, I did make these wee truffles on Monday night. They were incredibly easy and actually really tasty. I usually make truffles with chocolate, cream etc, but these little biscuit truffles are so much easier to make.

All you do is blitz 500g of oreo biscuits (I used 3 x 150g packets and it still worked ok) together in the food processor until they form little crumbs and then mix in a 250g pottle of cream cheese. I used lite cream cheese and that worked fine too. Roll the mixture into balls (wet hands worked best for this), chill (I actually put mine in the freezer), then dip in melted chocolate. I used milk chocolate for the dipping and sprinkled them with red, white and green hundreds to give them a Christmassy look. The recipe made 50-60 truffles depending on the size.

TWD - Cafe Volcano Cookies

2009-12-16T09:38:00.003+13:00

This week’s TWD recipe is Café Volcano Cookies and was chosen by Macduff of The Lonely Sidecar. This is probably one of the more unusual recipes in the book. The method is so odd, that you wonder what on earth the cookies are going to turn out like.

The cookies are like a cross between a meringue and a nut only Florentine. The method is more like that of a Florentine (ie throw everything in the pot together) than a meringue, but the ingredients are that of a meringue. Essentially you warm together over a low heat, egg whites, sugar, toasted almonds and walnuts and espresso powder, and then make wee mounds of the mixture on a baking tray and bake. Surprisingly the egg white doesn’t go omelette like when heated. The cookies are crisp and meringue like.

I was going to include my batch of cookies (which I halved) with the baking for hospice that I did in the weekend, but the cookies are very delicate and I don’t think they would enjoy being in a plastic bag. It’s a little early to give these delicate wee morsels away for Christmas, but I am sure my husband and I will both enjoy them over the next few days.

See what the other TWDers thought here.

TWD delayed

2009-12-15T08:35:00.001+13:00

My TWD posting will happen tomorrow :0)

Handbag Cookies

2009-12-14T14:40:00.005+13:00

This is a pretty un-Christmassy post of some little decorated cookies I made a while ago to thank a friend’s Mum for some wonderful knitting she did for our new baby. Christmas baking for me isn’t going to be the usual marathon effort given that my energy levels are not as high as usual (actually I usually just run on adrenalin and champagne this time of year, but of course neither of those things are good for baby growing!) and we have a wedding in Napier this weekend, which would usually be my Christmas baking weekend.

Anyway, back to the cookies. These are my usual shortbread cookies cut into handbag shapes. They are iced with pink tinted fondant and little royal icing flower. Cute and delicious. You could use the same concept to make Christmas themed handbag cookies for your girlfriends – make the handbags red and decorate with little gold balls.

Christmas Cupcakes

2009-12-10T08:53:00.006+13:00

Seeing it is December 9 already, I thought it was about time I posted something Christmassy. I made these cupcakes last week for a client function. I made about 60 of them. The cupcake recipe came from the Crabapple bakery Cook Book and was spicy mocha cupcakes. I did scale down the amount of coffee in them – in fact I wondered if ¼ c of instant coffee powder was a mistake in the recipe? The cupcakes had a lovely density to them that you would associate with gingerbread. They were subtly spiced and also had melted chocolate in them. They kept well too – I made them in Sunday and they still tasted ok (although probably not at their best!) by Wednesday (the function was on Tuesday).

The icing I simply rolled fondant. This gives a lovely professional looking finish. Some people don’t like the taste of fondant, but rolled relatively thinly it’s not too sweet. I cut out fondant stars and Christmas trees using cutters, and sprinkled them with coloured sugar for the little cake toppers. I used lightly beaten eggwhite to adhere the sprinkles. Another way of decorating these cupcakes which would look quite cool would be to ice them with a simple white glace icing and then pop a red or green giant pebble on top.

Spiced Mocha Cupcakes (adapted from the Crabapple Bakery)

(one recipe made approx 36 cupcakes)

1 tbsp instant coffee dissolved in 1 c boiling water
150g dark chocolate
200g butter
1 ½ c brown sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3 c flour
2 tsp b powder
1 tsp b soda
2 tsp mixed spice
½ c sour cream

• Stir chocolate into hot coffee mixture and stir until smooth
• Cream butter and sugar
• Beat in eggs, one at a time
• Stir in coffee mixture and vanilla
• Stir in dry ingredients alternately with the sour cream
• Spoon into cupcake cases and bake at 200c for 15-18 minutes

TWD - Sables

2009-12-08T10:12:00.003+13:00

This week’s TWD recipe is sables and was chosen by Barbara of Bungalow Barbara. These is my first Christmas themed baking for this year as well, although I did make my Christmas cake back in the end of October.

Sables are the French version of shortbread, the difference being that they are much more delicate and thin and contain egg yolks which enrich the dough. I cant remember whether I have made a true sable biscuit/cookie before, but I have tasted them in France. The recipe is very easy – if it was in my Nana’s recipe book it would say “make in the usual way” – ie cream butter and sugar, add egg yolks and then stir in flour. The dough is very soft, but time in the fridge makes the dough much more workable. You could roll this dough out and cut into shapes, but as it is very buttery, you might find that you lose the shape in the baking. I did what Dorie suggested – rolled the dough into logs, then rolled in Christmas coloured sugar, sliced and baked.

I only made a few of these cookies, freezing the rest of the dough for Christmas gifts. I loved the cookies – they are crisp and buttery and with the coloured sugar coating, look particularly festive. Dorie gives a number of variations and I want to try them all. Maybe everyone will be getting sables for Christmas from me this year!

See what the other TWDers thought here.

Cheat's Birthday Cake

2009-12-07T13:09:00.003+13:00

I was in Christchurch in the weekend for my niece’s 6th birthday. Piper wanted me to make her birthday cake, but it was a pretty full on day the actual day of her birthday, as my dad and brother in law were cycling in an event, so I didn’t get the time to actually bake a cake. Instead I bought a sponge from the supermarket and some whipped cream. I tinted the cream pink, whipped it, sandwiched the sponge together and the slathered more cream over the sides. I then decorated it with icing flowers – I made the big pink flowers, but bought the little roses at the supermarket (you can get so many more decorating bits and pieces at the supermarket now days). The effect is great I think, for a $4 cake a bottle of cream!

My niece loves baking and so our present to her was a kids baking book, an assortment of cupcake cases, little icing flowers I had made, sprinkles and edible gel pens. She loved the present and I cant wait to see what she creates with her new cupcake decorating equipment.

TWD - Rosy Poached Pear and Pistachio Tart

2009-12-01T12:53:00.004+13:00

I cant believe that it is a week since I have posted! It is definitely that time of year!!! Functions on every night lat week and being pregnant means that my evenings aren’t quite as full of baking as they used to be. Work is also exceptionally busy so I have been enjoying reading with my feet up rather than hours in the kitchen. Perhaps a sign of things to come?

But I did manage to make the TWD recipe this week which is Rosy Poached Pear and Pistachio Tart and was chosen by Lauren of I’ll Eat You. I almost didn’t make this tart. I have been told to slow down a bit and the three steps (three pages in the recipe book) and assembly of this tart almost defeated me. I ended up using some shortcrust pastry I had in the freezer ( a Dorie recipe but I am not sure which one!!), made a quarter of the pastry cream recipe and only poached one pear. I made two little tarts, one each for my husband and father in law is staying with us at the moment, helping with our landscaping.

The pastry cream for this tart was the star of the tart as far as I was concerned. It is made by grinding pistachio nuts with a little sugar and then warming the milk for the custard with the nut mixture in it. The pastry cream turns out a beautiful pistachio green colour (funnily enough!) and has that unique taste of pistachios. Dories says that you can strain out the nuts, but I wonder why you would want to do that, as in my view it is the fine pieces of nut that gives the tart it’s charm.

The pears are poached in a red wine syrup, cooled and then displayed on the tart. The garnish is toffeed pistachio nuts. This step did defeat me however, and I just chopped raw pistachio nuts for my garnish. The tarts were well received by my husband and his dad. I don’t think I would make this again though, mostly because I don’t like pears!

See if the other TWDers enjoyed the tart here.

TWD - All in One Holiday Bundt Cake

2009-11-24T10:13:00.003+13:00

This week’s TWD is all in one holiday Bundt Cake and was chosen by Britin of the Nitty Britty. This cake is perfect for this time of year in the states – full of all the things that you associate with autumn and thanksgiving – pumpkin, cranberries, pecans and apples. Of course, we are heading into summer, not autumn here and we don’t celebrate thanksgiving, but this is the most delicious cake for any time of the year.

The recipe is easy to put together. The only more time intensive bit is that we don’t have canned mashed pumpkin here, so I cooked some pumpkin and mashed it. When I do this I do it in the microwave and don’t add any liquid, as that makes the pumpkin go watery. It is best to steam it. Also, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, fresh or even frozen cranberries are very rare here, so I used dried cranberries instead. I also only had a 70g packet of pecans which is about 2/3 of a cup instead of the cup stipulated in the recipe, but that was fine.

This was my second time using my bundt pan. Last time was to make Dorie’s banana bundt. This time I didn’t have such great success getting the cake out of the tin – I don’t think I left it for quite long enough before trying to remove it. But it was still mostly in one piece. I made the maple syrup glaze for the cake, but I think I watered it down too much and the glaze kind of ran off the cake. It still tasted pretty good.

I would definitely make this cake again. See what the other TWDers thought here.

Cupcakes

2009-11-20T11:44:00.004+13:00

A couple of weeks ago I made these cupcakes and I was so delighted with how they turned out. I really need to get back into the cupcake making thing again as they are so much fun. I also need to start thinking about Christmas treats. Now that I am nearly 30 weeks pregnant the time I used to spend baking in the evenings is now spent lying on the sofa watching Sex and the City – I have never seen this before, but started watching re-runs on Sky and am now addicted!! I need to start baking again in time for the Christmas baking extravaganza!

These cupcakes are the same lemon cupcakes I made for my baby shower. Even though they look completely different, the flavours are virtually the same. The pink ones were baked in pink paper cases, and I actually popped a raspberry in each cake before it was baked for lemon and raspberry cakes. I then tinted cream cheese icing pink, swirled it on top and topped with edible glitter and a white chocolate heart which I had used a chocolate transfer on. It was the first time I had used edible glitter and I probably used a bit too much, but they still looked cute.

The other cupcakes I left the cream cheese icing uncoloured and then topped them with a red icing flower which I made. The cases are red, so all colour co-ordinated. Not as great looking as the pink ones but still cute and effective. The thing with cupcakes is that it’s almost all in the look rather than the taste.

Cheese Scones

2009-11-18T17:08:00.004+13:00

Recently I bought a new recipe book which is a breast cancer research fundraiser, but is full of the favourite baking recipes of well known NZ cooks. It is a lovely book and has some great recipes. I decided on Sunday to make the cheese scone recipe for lunch. I absolutely love cheese scones, but I have never really been a great scone maker.

This scone recipe is not your usual in that it contains an egg. In some ways this made the scones a little more like cheese puffs than cheese scones as they were very light. They also had buttermilk in them. When we came back from three months travelling round Europe five years ago, I always had buttermilk in the fridge, as our trip had included time bike touring round Ireland and I became addicted to Irish soda bread. The Irish soda bread recipe I was given by the owner of the B & B we stayed in in Tralee, included buttermilk – hence having it in the fridge. These days I don’t make as much bread and when a recipe calls for buttermilk I often add a tablespoon of white vinegar to a cup of milk and let it sour. This is what I did on Sunday.

I made two thirds of the following recipe (using just the egg yolk rather than the whole egg) and it made 6 large cheese scones. They were delicious both hot from the oven and even once cooled later on in the day. They all got eaten before I could see whether they would have survived until the next day, although I think scones are always better on the day made and preferably hot from the oven.

Cheese Scones (adapted from a Treasury of NZ Baking)

3 c self raising flour
½ tsp mustard powder
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
25g butter
100g grated tasty cheese
1 1/2c buttermilk (or sour your own milk by using my method above)
1 egg

• Combine flour, mustard powder and cayenne pepper
• Grate in butter and rub with fingers, stir in cheese
• Combine milk and egg
• Pour milk into a well in the middle of the flour and then us a knife to bring the dough together
• Pat out on a well floured bench and cut into scones. Sprinkle tops with a little more grated cheese
• Bake at 220c fanbake for 12 minutes

TWD - Sugar Topped Molasses Cookies

2009-11-17T11:58:00.004+13:00

This week’s TWD recipe is sugar topped molasses spice cookies chosen by Pamela of Cookies with Boys. I was looking forward to making these cookies as I’ve never baked wit molasses before – it’s not really a product we use in NZ that much – we tend to use golden syrup instead which is a more mild syrup.

When I went supermarket shopping on Saturday the only molasses they had at two supermarkets was blackstrap molasses. I had a feeling that wasn’t quite right and when I went home and looked at the recipe, I was right – it specifically said not to use blackstrap molasses. I had a wee taste of the molasses and it was pretty disgusting – thick , very dark and strong. I decided to make a half batch of the cookies anyway just to see what they were like. I didn’t even get to cook them. I had a taste of the mixture and it was foul! I decided not to even bake the yucky tasting mixture.

Having thrown the cookie dough down the waste disposal, I made the cookie dough again using golden syrup rather than molasses. The cookies were delicious. They turned out very similar to a gingernut biscuit – crisp, spicy but with a little bit of chew. I didn’t make them as flat as suggested in the recipe, but they were still delicious. Perfect with a glass of cold milk.

See what the other TWDers thought here.

Baby Shower Cupcakes for me

2009-11-13T12:12:00.006+13:00

One thing I haven’t mentioned on my blog is that I am having a baby. I am 28 weeks pregnant with our first child and that is the main reason why my postings haven’t been as regular over the last few months as they were in the past. It is an extremely exciting time and I am pleased to say that I have been incredibly well and enjoying every minute of it.

I mentioned earlier in the week that Mum and Dad and two of my sisters were up in the weekend. Well, on Saturday Mum and my sisters hosted a baby shower for me. It was a lovely afternoon and our little baby was so spoiled! We had a lovely afternoon tea with sandwiches, asparagus rolls, a cheese board and these cupcakes and shortbread that I made. The cupcakes were lemon yoghurt cake and were topped with tinted whipped cream. I topped them with these little fondant booties which I made. There was a tutorial on one of my favourite blogs, Not Quite Nigella, some time ago. You can find it here. They are deceptively easy to make and look just so gorgeous.

The shortbread shapes are decorated with fondant and royal icing. They are pretty simple but sometimes less is more. As you will be able to tell from the colours, we are not sure what we are having, so are having a very fun time guessing!

Birthday Cake

2009-11-12T09:53:00.004+13:00

When my in-laws were up a few weeks ago, it was my mother in law’s birthday. Rather than go out for dinner, I made a special dinner at home. I asked her what she would like for dinner and after her saying what ever you want to make a number of times, she confessed that her favourite is lamb. So, for the first time I cooked rack of lamb.

I used a Julie le Clerc recipe as a guide, coating the lamb rack in a crust made with breadcrumbs, sundried tomatoes and chopped olives. I think for my first go at lamb rack, I actually cooked it fairly well – cooked, but still lovely and pink in the middle. I served it with a salad of baby spinach, avocado and asparagus and cous cous.

I made a birthday cake for pudding. I used a recipe for a sponge cake from Ladies, A Plate. The forward to the recipe said that the cake didn’t rise high like a sponge cake usually would. And that was the truth. Even though the cake tasted lovely, I was a little disappointed with how flat it was. I did manage to cut in half and cream it (the cream is the best part of a sponge cake as far as I am concerned) and I did ice the top of the cake which is something I wouldn’t normally do but it was suggested the recipe. I then decorated the top of the cake with some icing flowers I made a while ago.

I wont make this cake again – it’s probably the first recipe from Ladies, A Plate that I haven’t really enjoyed, but if you want a very easy (albeit not terribly high!) sponge cake, then give it a go.

Birthday Sponge Cake (from Ladies, A Plate by Alexa Johnson)

2 eggs
1 egg yolk
70g icing sugar
55g flour

• Beat eggs, yolk and icing sugar until thick, pale and creamy
• Sift over flour and fold in
• Pour into a 20cm round tin which has had its base lined
• Bake at 190c for 25-30 minutes or until the cake has begun to shrink from the sides and bounces back when you touch the middle
• Cool on wire rack, then split and fill with whipped cream

TWD Cran Apple Crisp

2009-11-10T15:48:00.003+13:00

This week’s TWD recipe is cran apple crisp and was chosen by Em of the Repressed pastry Chef. As I mentioned yesterday we had my family staying over the weekend and it was pretty hectic. I almost forgot to make my cran apple crisp until last night when I quickly made dinner before we took Mum and Dad to the airport. I guess that this proves that cran apple crisp is a quick and easy dessert to make.

Cran apple crisp is basically like an apple crumble with the addition of cranberries, both fresh and dried. I was lazy and just made my crisp with canned apple slices and dried cranberries – you can very rarely buy fresh cranberries in NZ and the frozen ones are also hard to come by. The topping was a crumble made with the addition of rolled oats, thread coconut, cinnamon and ginger. We ate the crisp with yoghurt and a little milk.

We all loved this – leftovers would be good for breakfast as well!! See if the other TWDers enjoyed it here.

Carrot Cake

2009-11-09T11:13:00.005+13:00

My third sister (there are four of us) turns 30 next weekend and she and my youngest sister were up in the weekend, so I made her an early birthday cake. Mum and Dad were up as well so we had a wonderful weekend, but did miss sister #2. My sister’s favourite cake is carrot cake, but a plain carrot cake with no sultanas, pineapple etc in it. I have to say I am with her on that one, although I don’t mind walnuts in carrot cake.

I made the recipe from one of Annabel Langbein’s book. It makes a large, 23cm cake, but I actually made a higher cake in a 20cm cake tin. The cake is very easy to make – the recipe says to whiz it up in the food processor, but as I had my cake mixer out making other things, I just made it in that. The cake was beautiful and moist as well and is definitely my “go to” carrot cake recipe. I covered it with cream cheese icing and simply decorated it with little icing flowers I made a while ago. This recipe would make great cupcakes as well.

Carrot Cake (Annabel Langbein)

1 c neutral oil (I used rice bran oil)
2 c raw sugar
4 eggs
1 c wholemeal flour
1 c plain flour
3 c grated carrot
1 tsp each mixed spice and ginger
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp baking soda dissolved in 1 tbsp orange juice (I used milk)

• Beat together oil, sugar and eggs
• Beat in flour, then carrot and spices and lastly baking soda
• Pour into lined 23 or 20cm round cake tin
• Bake at 160c for 50-60 minutes or until cooked through
• When cold ice with cream cheese icing.

Oaty Caramel Slice

2009-11-04T09:14:00.004+13:00

My in-laws were up last week. My father in law was helping build a part of our new fence. As I have mentioned before, it always like to fill the tins before guests arrived and this time I made some biscuits (which I will blog about at a later date) and this oaty caramel slice. Both were a hit, but in particular the caramel slice. As you know by now, I love caramel slice. I actually love caramel, so it doesn’t particularly bother me what kind of caramel slice it is. This oaty one could fool you into thinking that it was a little bit good for you. But, even though the oats do offer up a little more fibre than some of the other variations of caramel slice that I make, the amount of butter in this slice probably counteracts against the wholesomeness of the oats!

The original recipe had chopped dates in the crumble topping. I didn’t have any dates at home, so I substituted dried apricots. I actually think that dates would probably work better as they would probably incorporate into the topping a little more – the apricots tended to fall off. I also made the slice in a smaller tin than that specified and while that was good for the caramel layer, if I made this again I would make it in the bigger tin but do 1 ½ times the caramel. The recipe used purchased caramelised condensed milk (similar to dulche de leuche). However, you can make your own by boiling an un-opened can of condensed milk for 2 hours, making sure you keep the water topped up to cover the can, and you are very careful when opening the can, as the hot caramel often splutters (a friend once got a bad pock mark on her forehead when opening a hot can of caramelised condensed milk).

Oaty Caramel Slice

220g butter
1 c brown sugar
1 c rolled oats
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 ½ c flour
1 tsp baking powder
380g can caramelised condensed milk (I would use 1 1/.2 or even 2 cans)

• Melt butter and then add in rest of ingredients other than condensed milk
• Press into a 20x30 cm tin and bake at 180c for 15-20 minutes
• Lightly cool, spread over caramel and then sprinkle with the following topping and bake for a further 15 minutes

1 c rolled oats
1 c finely chopped dates or dried apricots
½ tsp cinnamon
½ c flour
100g butter

• Combine dry ingredients and then rub in butter to make a crumble mixture

TWD - Chocolate Caramel chestnut Cake

2009-11-03T10:52:00.003+13:00

This week’s TWD recipe is another rich cake – Chocolate Caramel Chestnut Cake, and was chosen by Katya of Second Dinner. I have to admit yet again, that this is a cake that I would have by-passed if I wasn’t baking my way through this book. It is a layer cake (layer cakes aren’t as big in NZ as they seem to be in the States) and is a reach concoction of two types of chocolate ganache and chestnuts.

The actual cake is a sponge made with sweetened chestnut paste. For some reason I had a tube of vanilla sweetened chestnut paste in the pantry. I had never used it before, and must have bought it one day, just in case, but not really knowing what I would do with it. The cake is a lovely, light cake as you beat the egg whites separately and fold into the cake mixture at the end. I actually thought that the cake was quite delicious by itself without the addition of the yummy but a bit sickly ganache.

The cake is layered with a caramel milk chocolate ganache made by making a caramel sauce then adding milk chocolate and a little bit of dark chocolate. You then beat in butter once this mixture has cooled. The amount of butter used seemed a lot, so I halved it as the ganache was tasty enough and creamy enough without having to add a lot of butter. The cake was cut into three layers and a good dollop of ganache spread between each layer. You were meant to sprinkle chopped chestnuts over the ganache, but even though it was a chestnut cake, I left them out – it is the wrong season for chestnuts here and the vacuum packed ones aren’t stocked at my supermarket and I didn’t go searching for them at a specialty food store.

The whole cake was covered in a glaze which was essentially dark chocolate ganache. I made ¼ of the recipe which made two little 10cm cakes. I decorated the tops with gold dragees. To be honest I wouldn’t make this cake again as I found the end result to be a bit too sickly sweet. Layer cakes are a bit too much for me unless they are layered with whipped cream.

See if the other TWDers enjoyed the cake more than I did here.

Raspberry and Almond Cakes

2009-11-02T13:59:00.002+13:00

A couple of Saturday nights ago, my husband and I had one of those rare Saturday nights where we had nothing on. I made him mussels for dinner (one of his favourite things, except this time I did them in a tamarind coconut cream broth and he wasn’t overly fussed on the tamarind flavour) and salmon for me (I don’t like mussels). Even though we don’t usually have dessert when it is just the two of us, I thought it would be nice to make something and I so I made us a little raspberry and almond cupcake each.

The recipe is in Donna Hay’s latest book and is actually for a full cake. I scaled the recipe back to 1/3 of the original and made two little cakes. The cake recipe is really a friand recipe – made with egg whites, ground nuts, melted butter and icing sugar. I like the idea of making little cakes from this recipe as the finished product is light and delicate and kind of suits little cakes, rather than one big one. I have given the recipe below for 6 little cakes, but the recipe does easily scale down.

Raspberry and Almond Cakes (adapted from Donna Hay)

1/3 c flour
2/3 c ground almonds
1 c icing sugar
90g butter, melted and cooled
3 egg whites, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla
1 c raspberries (I used frozen)

• Combine all ingredients other than the raspberries. Mix well, but do not beat
• Stir in raspberries and spoon into little cake moulds or cases
• Bake at 160c for 35-40 minutes or until the thin blade of a knife comes out clean
• Serve warm or at room temperature with extra raspberries and whipped cream

Lemon Slice for Hospice

2009-10-29T11:37:00.003+13:00

I mentioned last week that it was Baking for Hospice time again and I made the cupcakes I posted about last week. I also made this lemon slice. I have been so lucky this year in that I havent had to buy lemons once. I have been supplied by friends and also from the lemon tree at one of our rental properties. I have had enough to cook and bake with and also to preserve. My friend who was staying with me actually chose this recipe for me to make for hospice. It is from A Second Helping, the sequel to Ladies, A Plate.

The slice has a thin shortbread style base and then a lemon curd style topping. The slice makes a large one, but it is quite thin. I was tempted to make it in a smaller tin, but lemon slice is one of those things, that should be delicate, not thick and stodgy. The recipe didn’t say to use the zest of the lemon, but I did and I think that added to the texture, if not to the flavour. The recipe also suggested drizzling the top with chocolate. Now, I am a real chocolate lover, but I just cant imagine chocolate on lemon slice. Perhaps white chocolate, but definitely not dark. I just sprinkled my slice with icing sugar.

Lemon Slice (method adapted but ingredients the same - from A Second Helping by Alexa Johnston)

170g butter
105g icing sugar
180g flour

• Cream butter and icing sugar; stir in flour to make a dough
• Press dough into a lined 20x30cm slice tin and bake at 180c for 15-20 minutes or until golden

55g softened butter
200g sugar
15g flour
Juice and zest of three lemons
3 eggs

• Gently combine all ingredients with a whisk
• Pour over hot base and bake at 180c for a further 30 minutes
• When cold remove from tin and cut into slices. Dust with icing sugar

Cherry Fudge Brownie Torte

2009-10-27T14:53:00.005+13:00

This week’s TWD recipe is Cherry Fudge Brownie Torte and was chosen by April of Short & Rose. It’s a shame that there isn’t a photo of this recipe in Dorie’s book as I actually think this has been one of my favourite recipes that we have made so far. In saying that, it was an expensive recipe to make as it had lots of chocolate, butter, mascarpone, cream cheese and cream in it (yes, not the weight watchers special) but it was truly delicious. I probably would have made a scaled down version of this recipe, except we have my in-laws staying with us at the moment and I thought they would enjoy having the leftovers in the fridge for a few days.

This dessert has a very rich brownie base which is studded with dried sour cherries. I have never seen dried sour cherries in the usual places I shop, so I actually used bottled cherries. This also meant that I left out the step where you flambéed the dried cherries in kirsch – the most challenging part of the recipe. I think I probably preferred the canned cherries in the tort as I don’t like dried fruit. I also got the opportunity to open my beautiful jar of French cherry preserves which I bought at the food show a few months ago.

The topping is a decadent mixture of cream cheese, mascarpone, sugar and cream – like a cheesecake topping, but not too sweet – the sweetness comes from the brownie base. Dorie suggested decorating the top of the torte with pureed cherry preserves. However, I didn’t really want to use my expensive French preserves for that, so I used raspberry jam – completely different flavour I know, but it did have the visual effect I was after. Christmas is at our place this year and I think that I may make a raspberry version of the torte for Christmas, using fresh raspberries instead of the cherries and then decorating the top of the torte with fresh raspberries.

I loved this recipe and will definitely be making this again. See if the other TWDers loved it as much as we did here.

Holiday Slice

2009-10-23T08:28:00.003+13:00

I mentioned yesterday that my friend and her children were up last weekend, so I wouldn’t to fill the tins with something “child friendly”. I had a look through my books and ended up picking a slice from a book which was one of my very first recipe books. The book is a community cookbook from Orepuki, a small community in rural Southland where my mother’s cousins lived. I think I got the book when I was about 9 and even then I have ticked recipes and written “good” beside them in the same way my Nana had in her cook books.

There is a great baking section in this book, lots of great tin fillers. I picked a recipe called holiday slice which sounds pretty boring but is actually delicious. The recipe has cornflakes in it and I chose if because even though we don’t eat cornflakes for breakfast, I bought some a while ago to make afghans and I ended up buying a huge box as it looked nicer on my pantry shelf than a bag of cornflakes! So I wanted to use some more up.

The slice recipe is the easiest kind to make and would be great to bake with kids. You mix all your dry ingredients in a bowl, stir in melted butter, press into a tin, bake and then ice with chocolate icing. I added more cocoa to mine to give it a more chocolatey flavour and I also added an egg yolk, as my mixture was a little dry and more melted butter would have given a very crisp slice rather than the slightly chewy one I wanted to create. Once I had iced the slice I covered it with these cute sprinkles I found at foodtown – they are a combination of hundreds and thousands, long sprinkles (which I think are called jimmies in the states) and stars. They are so cute and really made my slice appealing to the kids. I cut the slice into little two bite pieces. The kids weren’t the only ones that loved it – the adults thought it was pretty good too.

Holiday Slice

1 c flour
1 c cornflakes
1c sugar
3 tbsp cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
1 c coconut
150g butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg yolk

• Combine dry ingredients, then stir in melted butter and vanilla. If the mixture is still a little dry add the egg yolk
• Press into a lined 27 x 18 cm tin and bake at 180c for 20 minutes
• When cold ice with chocolate icing and sprinkle with hundreds and thousands, coconut or chocolate hail

Cupcakes for Hospice

2009-10-22T11:03:00.003+13:00

Last Sunday was another “baking for hospice” run. I had my friend and her 4 year old and 18 month old staying with me, so the 4 year old and I decided to make cupcakes as part of my contribution to baking for hospice. After a big day out at the zoo, shopping and visiting a friend with a newborn baby, I wanted an easy non-demanding recipe to make. Something that a 4 year old could easily help me with. So I looked to my Ladies, A Plate book and decided to make the recipe in there for cupcakes. It is a very simple cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs, then the dry ingredients and milk style recipe. The cakes are plain vanilla ones, but you could change the flavouring by adding citrus zest, replacing cocoa for flour or even tinting the mixture with food colouring to get coloured cupcakes.

The recipe made 12 standard sized cupcakes. The next morning we made buttercream icing, tinting it a pale pink, and spread it on the cupcakes, topping each one with a royal icing flower which I made some time ago. My little friend decorated hers with heart shaped sprinkles. I love how something as simple as pretty pink icing and a flower can turn an otherwise plain cupcake into something special.

Cupcakes (from Ladies, A Plate)

115g butter
150g sugar
2 eggs
180g flour
1 tsp baking powder
115ml milk
1 tsp vanilla

• Cream butter and sugar, beat in eggs, one at a time
• Combine flour and baking powder and fold into the creamed mixture alternately with the milk and vanilla
• Spoon into cupcake cases and bake at 180c for 20 minutes or until cooked through.
• When cold decorate with buttercream icing

TWD - Sweet Potato Biscuits

2009-10-20T08:30:00.004+13:00

This week’s TWD recipe is Sweet Potato Biscuits and was chosen by Erin from Prudence Pennywise. This recipe requires a bit of a translation for New Zealand readers, as in NZ, sweet potato are called kumara (the Maori word for the variety of sweet potato that grows here) and biscuits are actually akin to our scones – a biscuit in NZ is really a cookie.

Also, in NZ we don’t have canned sweet potato (I cant even imagine what that would be like!). So in order to make the biscuits, I steamed a whole beauregard kumara (the orange fleshed variety of kumara) and mashed it. This meant that I had to add a little milk to my biscuit dough, as the mashed kumara by itself was a bit dry. I halved the recipe and instead of making the biscuits into little rounds as the recipe suggested, I cut four scone sized biscuits from the dough.

I loved these. The kumara gave a real tenderness to the biscuits. They were light and flaky and just delicious. We ate them warm with butter even though Dorie said that they are best a while after they are cooked. I would be interested to see how different mine were using fresh kumara as opposed to canned sweet potato.

See what the other TWDers thought here.

Ricotta Bites

2009-10-19T12:30:00.002+13:00

A few weeks ago we went to friends for dinner and I volunteered to make a plate of nibbles. I ended up making these tasty wee bites, which are ricotta and ham bites, loosely based on a recipe in a donna Hay magazine. They are very easy to make and are really tasty. They are sort of like mini quiches but I think are almost simpler to make.

To make them combine a 200g tub of ricotta with an egg, grated parmesan to taste and some chopped herbs (I used chopped basil). Season well with salt and pepper – one of the things I learned at the cooking classes I used to attend at the Epicurean is that with nibbles, it is important to season well, as it is just one mouthful and you want to leave a lasting impression. Spray mini muffin tins with non stick spray (I use a rice bran oil spray), line with prosciutto, or use strips of shaved ham as I did, fill with a teaspoon of the ricotta mixture and bake at 180c for about 12 minutes or until browned and set.

Leave for a few minutes before loosening and removing from tin. You could add all sorts of different flavourings such as pesto, sun dried tomatoes, different cheeses, tomato relish etc.

Double Chocolate Cookies

2009-10-15T16:37:00.001+13:00

A couple of issues ago there was a recipe in Dish magazine for double chocolate cookies. My sister who also subscribes to the magazine made them and didn’t rate the recipe that highly. I made them in the weekend and actually thought that they were really great. I did modify the recipe just a little to include 2 egg yolks rather than a full egg and 1 egg yolk. I made this recipe using white chocolate and dark chocolate buttons. They, of course, would be much nicer using real chocolate.

The butter in this recipe is melted rather than softened. I think this is what gives the cookies the great texture which is crisp but chewy at the same time. I think I might try these again with equal amounts of white and brown sugar which would hopefully still give the chewy texture but perhaps give a lighter colour to the finished product.

Double Chocolate Cookies (adapted from Dish magazine)

190g butter
½ c sugar
1 c brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 egg yolks
2 c flour
½ tsp baking soda
¾ c each dark and white chocolate chips or buttons

• Melt butter and whisk in sugars
• Whisk in vanilla and egg yolks and then stir in the balance of the ingredients
• Roll mixture into balls and flatten slightly with the palm of your hand
• Bake at 170c for 15 minutes or until golden

TWD - Allspice Crumb Muffins

2009-10-13T09:00:00.004+13:00

This week’s TWD recipe is Allspice crumb Muffins and was chosen by Kayte of http://www.grandmaskitchentable.typepad.com/. At first glance I didn’t think these muffins had a lot going for them – they had nothing of interest to note other than a crumb topping – no fruit, chocolate etc to make them interesting. However, I completely underestimated how delicious they were in their plainness.

The muffins are subtly flavoured with allspice, one of those spices that you only use every now and again. I was tempted to put more spice in the muffins as half a teaspoon didn’t seem to be enough, but it was just right. I actually pretty much stuck to the ingredients as listed. Usually when I made muffins I try to make them a little more healthy by using rice bran oil, and always no more than ¼ c, and only even use one egg. I decided to stick with the butter with these muffins, and while I would normally cut the amount of butter in half, this time I scaled it back to 90g which was about ¾ of that stated in the recipe. I figured that the butter was an important taste factor in the muffins.

One thing I did do was use half wholemeal flour and half plain. This gave the muffins a bit more of a healthy bent (more fibre) and I think was a welcome addition. The crumb topping was delicious, but you could as easily halve the crumb mixture and still have enough to top all your muffins – I ended up throwing about half of mine away.

The verdict on these muffins was that they were delicious. I think they were particularly good warm from the oven and I actually buttered mine (a rare treat in this day and age!). I would definitely make these again using my wholemeal variation. See what the other TWDers thought here.

Simple and Cute

2009-10-11T13:28:00.003+13:00

Quick Sunday afternoon post. It is a gorgeous day here - seems like the first fine weather weekend day in ages. I'm about to go and do some things outside, but thought I would post this photos of these cookies I made for my sister last week. they are simply shortbread cookies cut into rounds, then decorated with pink and white icing. I actually really like the one with the pink sprinkles on it.

Every weekend I think to myself that I am going to practice my cookie and cake decorating, but each weekend gets so caught up in household chores and other things that I run out of time. We've got a long weekend coming up in a couple of weeks, so fingers crossed for then!

Tan Square

2009-10-08T09:47:00.003+13:00

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that the sequel to “Ladies, A Plate” had been published. My youngest sister, who as I have mentioned before loves caramel slice, was up a couple of weeks ago, so it was the perfect opportunity to try the tan square from Ladies, A Plate, a second helping. Tan Square is a caramel slice which has a shortcake style base, a caramel filling and then a topping which is some of the base mixture reserved and crumbled over the top.

Traditional tan square has a rather mean layer of caramel in it, and as with the way most slices were back in the 1950s and 1960s (judging by the quantities in recipe books of that era) the slice was a thinner more delicate version of the huge hunks of slice we see cafes today. I must admit though when it comes to caramel slice, be it tan square or any other version, my preference is for thick caramel and a decent wedge of biscuit base on the bottom. So, I did play around with this recipe quite a bit, doubling the caramel mixture and also making more base than suggested. The original recipe had chopped walnuts added to the crumble topping – I left those out and just added more chocolate chips. My other trick to making a delicious caramel slice is to slightly under cook it, giving a deliciously gooey slice. If you don’t have access to golden syrup, you could add some brown sugar, but you wont get quite the same syrupy flavour to the caramel. I guess you could also try maple syrup but that will also give you a slightly different taste.

Tan Square (adapted from so as to not really even resemble the recipe in A Second helping)

250g butter
125g sugar
1 tsp vanilla
420g flour
½ c chocolate chips

• Cream butter, sugar and vanilla
• Mix in flour
• Spread 2/3 of the mixture into a lined 23cm square tin. Pop the rest of the mixture into the fridge while you make the caramel

60g butter
2 generous tbsp golden syrup
1 400g can condensed milk

• Stir ingredients together in a small pot over a gentle heat until butter is melted and the caramel is thick
• Pour over the base, then stir the chocolate chips into the reserved base mixture and crumble over the caramel
• Bake at 175c for 20-25 minutes until golden

TWD - Split Level Pudding

2009-10-06T08:38:00.002+13:00

This week’s TWD recipe was chosen by Garett of Flavour of Vanilla and is Split Level Pudding. This is a recipe I have been looking forward to making for a long time – Dorie explains it as being a recipe that appeals to vanilla lovers and chocolate lovers alike.

You will have to forgive the poor photography – I made the puddings late in the day on Sunday and by the time I went to photograph them all natural light had gone and I just couldn’t get them to look as good as they tasted.

The split level pudding is a layer of chocolate ganache topped with a set vanilla custard. I made a third of the recipe and made the puddings in two high ball glasses. This made enough for a medium sized pudding each for my husband and me. The pudding was made with the aid of a food processor – you blended the egg yolk, sugar and cornflour with hot milk and then thickened it over a medium heat on the stove. You were then meant to blitz the pudding in the food processor and add some vanilla and butter. Me being me, I only skim read the recipe and had dismantled and put away my food processor before my pudding had thickened. So, I just whisked the pudding like mad once it came off the stove. I didn’t add the butter because I didn’t really think that the pudding needed it.

I enjoyed this pudding. I think the chocolate ganache was a wonderful addition (maybe I am a chocolate not a vanilla girl?), as you could dip your spoon in for a small addition of the chocolate to eat with a spoon of vanilla pudding, rather than getting an overt chocolate flavour. I would make this again, but next time I think I would make more ganache so that the ratio of chocolate to vanilla was more like 40:60 rather than about 20:80.

See what the other TWDers thought here.

Jaffa Cupcakes

2009-10-05T09:00:00.003+13:00

A couple of weeks ago we met some friends for afternoon tea at Cornwall Park. I made these jaffa cupcakes to take. It’s quite a long story as to how I decided to make jaffa cupcakes, but here goes……

A few weeks ago I decided to make fudge for some gifts. I wanted to use a recipe from a Jo Seagar cook book which involved melting marshmallows, adding melted chocolate and other things. Instead of going to the supermarket, I stopped at the service station on the way home to buy the marshmallows. There I spotted a bag of orange flavoured M & Ms which cutely only have white or orange candy coatings. I thought they would be good add ins to the fudge to make it look a bit more decorative.

Well, the fudge was a disaster! I melted the marshmallows and butter in the microwave for he advised amount of time, but it must have been a bit long and overheated the marshmallow mixture, as when I added the chocolate the whole things seized. Well, I was determined that roughly $10 worth of ingredients wasn’t going into the bin, so I beat the fudge like crazy until it sort of came together. I didn’t want to waste my m & ms by putting them into sub-standard fudge (which actually ended up tasting ok in the end anyway) so I saved them for another day.

So, when I was deciding what cupcakes to make to our picnic afternoon tea, I thought I would use the orange and white m & ms to decorate them with. I had some lovely Kerikeri oranges in the fruit bowl after our trip to the bay of islands and thought Jaffa Cupcakes would be perfect. However, in the end I decided not to decorate them with the orange M & Ms after all – they are still stashed in my pantry. Instead I topped the cakes with whipped cream (I still reckon this is the best cupcake topping as it pipes like a dream and I don’t find it too sweet) and sprinkled them with orange coloured sugar. Simple but delicious.

Jaffa Cupcakes

100g butter
2/3 c sugar
2 large eggs
3 tbsp cocoa dissolved in 3 tbsp hot water
Zest of one orange
3 tsbp freshly squeezed orange juice
2/3 c self raising flour

• Cream butter and sugar, then beat in eggs, one at a time
• Beat in cocoa dissolved in water and orange zest
• Fold in remaining ingredients
• Spoon into cupcake cases ( I got 11 cupcakes) and bake at 180c for 17-20 minutes
• When cold top with chocolate icing made with orange juice instead of water or whipped cream

Decorating Brownie

2009-10-01T08:34:00.006+13:00

Last week when my sister was up we went to the Wilton brownie decorating course. This is apparently the latest Wilton thing. I hadn’t really thought about decorating brownie before, but of course, the same techniques can be used on any slab cake cut into shapes or just on cupcakes. I enjoyed it for two reasons – it was something fun to do with my sister and secondly it was actually quite good to do a bit of a refresher course on the basic icing skills I learnt in course 1.

Now that daylight savings has arrived and the days are getting longer and slightly warmer we are starting to have a few more salad type meals – and of course asparagus! This salad is one that we had last week. I pan fried lamb leg steaks, sliced them and then combined with baby spinach leaves, sliced roasted red peppers, roast red onions and roasted chunks of kumara. I drizzled the lot with balsamic drizzle. Tasty and pretty at the same time.

I also want to mention that you may or may not have noticed that I didn’t post a daring bakers challenge this week. Life has become even busier lately and I have made the decision that the only blog challenge I will continue to participate in is TWD – lately I have been making my Daring Baker challenges in a real rush and not giving them the time they deserve, so I have decided to retire my DB apron strings – at least for the next little while!

TWD - Chocolate Crunched Caramel Tart

2009-09-29T11:58:00.003+13:00

This week’s TWD recipe is Chocolate Crunched Caramel Tart and was chosen by Carla of Chocolate Moussey. When I got to choose the TWD recipe nearly a year ago this would have been my second pick – a crisp tart shell filled with caramel and peanuts and topped with chocolate ganache. I scaled the recipe back to make only two small tarts.

Dorie’s shortcrust pastry is very easy to make and tastes delicious (almost as good raw as baked!). I rolled out enough to line my two little tart tins and then froze the rest for another day. The caramel layer was made by melting sugar in a pan, then adding a little corn syrup (known as liquid glucose here), then butter and then cream. I was a bit nervous about melting the sugar from scratch, so I did add little water to get it going. My caramel actually turned out pretty perfectly – it was the same dark toffee colour of the photo in the book. But I think next time I wouldn’t take the caramel quite as dark, to get a lighter flavour rather than a dark, smoky toffee flavour.

Once cooled a little, honey roasted peanuts are added to the caramel. I loved the effect of this which is interesting given that I don’t like things such as snickers bars. I did like the way though that the nuts gave a slightly salty taste to the caramel. I think that salted caramel flavour is one of the most wonderful things. The topping on the tart is a thick layer of ganache. I used 70% cocoa chocolate and once again, I think next time I would use a lighter chocolate – maybe 60% as the whole effect was quite rich.

My sister was up for the weekend and we kind of looked at each other thinking hmmm, this is going to be very rich. But we stood up to the challenge and the tart was wonderful – one of those things that you think you are not going to be able to eat very much of as it is just so rich, but you keep going back for another bite as it is just too good!!!

See if the other TWDers loved this tart here.

Cornflake Crunchies

2009-09-28T14:45:00.003+13:00

I mentioned a couple of week’s ago that I had had a look through some of my Nana’s old recipe books. Last weekend I made these cookies from one of Nana’s books. They were called caramel biscuits in the book, but I am not sure that the title gives a very apt description of what they actually are.

The cookies are what I would call a good tin filler – they are delicious every day cookies, easy to make and the recipe yield is quite high. They are plain biscuits made more interesting with the addition of coconut and cornflakes. I also added cinnamon chips. Cinnamon chips aren’t available in New Zealand, but my lovely friend, Morven, bought me some on her recent trip to the States. Cinnamon chips have an interesting flavour – more of the kind of flavour you get from one of those cinnamon flavoured chewing gums rather than a spicy cinnamon flavour. They did go really well in these cookies though. You could substitute chocolate chips or even dried cranberries, raisins, sultanas etc for the cinnamon chips, or leave them plain as in the original recipe. The cookies will appeal if you like a crunchy cookie. I think I would re-name them cornflake crunchies.

Cornflake Crunchies

120g butter
¾ c sugar
1 tbsp condensed milk’
1 egg yolk
½ tsp vanilla
1 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
½ c coconut
1 c cornflakes
½ c cinnamon chips, chocolate chips or dried fruit of your choice (optional)

- cream butter and sugar
- Beat in condensed milk, then egg yolk and vanilla
- mix in remaining dry ingredients
- roll small balls of mixture into balls, place on tray and flatten with a wet fork
- Bake at 175c for 15 minutes or until golden

Wilton Course 4

2009-09-25T15:21:00.003+12:00

My blog has been rather neglected of late and I must apologise for a rather short post. Hopefully next week will be better! This is the final cake I made for the fondant and gum paste Wilton course. To be honest it doesn’t really display any of the “skills” we learnt in the course, mainly because I didn’t like many of the effects we were taught – I prefer a simpler style.

I did like the contrast between the pale pink icing and dark chocolate cake for this cake. The wee flowers are dogwood rose shapes which give quite a contemporary look.

Fingers crossed for more blogging next week – I have been baking, just not blogging!

TWD - Cottage Cheese Pufflets

2009-09-22T12:27:00.002+12:00

This week’s TWD recipe is Cottage Cheese Pufflets chosen by Jacque of daisy Lane Cakes (you have to check out Jacque’s blog – it’s one of my favourites!). This was an interesting recipe – one I probably would have by-passed if I wasn’t baking with the group. It sounds very interesting and it is. Interestingly it is in the cookie section of the book – the name of the recipe to me indicates little muffin like cheese puffs, but these are in fact cookie type creations.

I only made a quarter of the recipe as I had done some other baking over the weekend and Dorie (quite rightly) advised that the pufflets are best eaten on the day of baking. The cookies are little squares of pastry made with butter, a little sugar, cottage cheese and flour. The dough is a very soft one and you have to chill it well before rolling out. I ended up making little square puffs rather than triangle and being the impatient person that I am, I didn’t roll the dough out as thinly as was recommended. Each little pufflet has a small dollop of jam in the centre (I used raspberry jam).

I liked these better than I thought I would. Although, I think they were at their best when they were still warm from the oven. I actually the pastry of these would be nice made with something savoury inside – like some pesto and prosciutto. I don’t think I would make them again as a sweet something though.

See what the other TWDers though of the pufflets here.

Something Different

2009-09-21T11:44:00.003+12:00

I usually have porridge for breakfast – summer and winter. I love it and it is my favourite meal of the day. Lately it has left me filling a bit full and icky, so I decided that I would make some muesli in the weekend to give my body a bit of a change.

I am one of those unusual creatures who doesn’t like dried fruit. So shop bought muesli doesn’t really do it for me. If I am out and I have cereal I have to pick out all the sultanas and raisins – even one sultana will ruin my breakfast. So, the muesli I make for myself is pretty plain. Often I do put sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds or linseeds in it, but I kept this version pretty low key.

The muesli was simply made by mixing together rolled oats, whole almonds, about 50g melted butter, 1/3 c brown sugar and 2 tsp cinnamon. I spread the combined mixture on a baking tray and baked at 160c for 30 minutes. Keep an eye on it as the sugar can burn and then it is ruined. Once the muesli had cooled I mixed it with all bran for some extra fibre. It was perfect with mixed berry yoghurt and milk for breakfast this morning.

Old Fashioned Favourite

2009-09-18T12:05:00.003+12:00

A sequel to one of my favourite books, Ladies, A Plate, has just been released. It’s called (quite cutely) A Second Helping. It’s full of more old fashioned favourite recipes, the kind I find in my Nana’s recipe books. I am lucky enough to have two of my Nana’s recipe books. They are the two cook books I treasure most from my vast collection. They are what I would call “community” cook books- recipes collated by women in a local community raising money for a particular cause. I love Nana’s handwritten notes in the margin. Treasures such as “Good!”, “Not as good as my recipe”, “Good for a party” and other such notes.

Having received “A Second Helping” it inspired me to look through Nana’s books again. I came across a recipe called chocolate cream slice. My blogging friend Morven said her mother used to make this and it was called keamish Square. It is a real old fashioned slice, but quite delicious. A chocolate base, layer of raspberry jam, layer of a kind of mock cream which is set with gelatine and then chocolate icing. My husband loved it. I really liked it too but it is quite sweet so you can really only eat a small bit at a time.

I’ve tagged a whole heap of other old fashioned recipes that I am going to try and report on in the coming months.

Chocolate Cream (or Kneamish) Square

120g butter
120g sugar
1 egg
180g flour
1 tbsp cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
Raspberry jam

• Cream butter and sugar; beat in egg
• Stir in dry ingredients.
• Press into lined 18 x 23cm tin and bake at 175c for 25 minutes
• When cold top with a layer of raspberry jam and then the following topping and then once that has set, ice with chocolate icing

120g butter
60g sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp gelatine dissolved in 3 tbsp cold water

• Cream butter and sugar
• Beat in remaining in ingredients until thick, pale and creamy

Cake Decorating

2009-09-16T16:07:00.005+12:00

I am currently doing course 4 of the Wilton cake decorating courses – this course focuses on fondant and gumpaste. To be honest it probably isn’t worth doing – well, that’s not quite right. The four lessons could quite easily be condensed down into two lessons. I actually had to miss a lesson last week as well as we were away on holiday.

Gum paste is like a much more expensive (4 time the price) version of fondant. The advantage it has over fondant is that it sets hard. Whereas fondant doesn’t completely dry hard. It is used to make flowers such as the carnations and daisies we were taught in the class. This little cake is a banana cake and is quite simply decorated with green and white stripes and whit daisies. We were meant to be doing a cake with a shawl thing on it. Well, I cannot imagine a situation where I would put a shawl of fondant on a cake, so I made my more simply decorated cake. It’s not perfect but it’s kind of cute.

I haven’t posted for ages on any week day meals we have had, mostly because the last three weeks or so have just passed by in a blur! Last night we had lovely fresh fish (terakihi). I sprinkled it with lemon zest, sea salt and pepper and drizzled it with lemon infused olive oil before roasting it at a high temperature for about 12 minutes. Just before it came out of the oven I sautéed some slivered almonds and cherry tomatoes in a little lemon infused olive oil, just until the nuts turned golden and the tomatoes started to pop out of their skins. I spooned this over the fish and served it with roast kumara, salad and home made hummus on the side. This was loosely based on a recipe in the latest Dish magazine.

TWD - flaky apple turnovers

2009-09-15T12:15:00.002+12:00

This week’s TWD recipe was chosen by Julie of Someone’s in the Kitchen and is Flaky Apple Turnovers. This is another one of those recipes that I probably wouldn’t have been rushing to make, but I was pleasantly surprised with.

The flakiness of the pastry dough for these turnovers comes from the “folding like an envelope” action when rolling the pastry, and the tenderness is aided by the addition of sour cream (in my case thick natural yoghurt). I just made a half recipe of the pastry, and even then only added about 2/3 of the butter, so my pastry probably wasn’t as flaky as it might have been – it just seemed to be an horrendous amount of butter!! I actually only ended up using enough pastry to make 3 apple turnovers and I froze the rest for another day.

The filling is simply sliced apples, cinnamon, sugar and a little four to thicken. The turnovers were delicious straight from the oven (I don’t think they would taste all that great cold). We had them with mixed berry yoghurt which was a delicious complement. See what the other TWDers thought here.

TWD - Chocolate Souffle, Better late than Never!

2009-09-13T11:57:00.003+12:00

Another short and sweet post. We came back from holiday yesterday – had a wonderful time in the beautiful bay of Islands. Weather was fabulous too. I wasn’t able to make last week’s TWD challenge to post on Tuesday, so here is my chocolate soufflé for last week chosen by Susan of She’s becoming Domestic. I made a half recipe. My soufflé puffed up beautifully in the oven and then spectacularly deflated when I took it out!! It still tasted delicious though and we had it with yoghurt for dessert.

Back to usual posting next week!!!

SPCA Cupcake Day

2009-09-04T16:27:00.004+12:00

We are off on holiday next week so there wont be any posting. In the meantime, it was SPCA cupcake day on Monday and I made these cupcakes to take to work for people to “buy” as a donation to the SPCA. My favourite were the dogs – so cute. The dog cupcakes are chocolate cake and the cats are vanilla. See you all in a week!

Birthday Cupcakes

2009-09-02T17:08:00.004+12:00

My sister, her husband and my gorgeous niece and nephew have been staying for the past week. While they were here, it was my sister’s birthday. In the weekend my other two sisters came up and we had a birthday picnic on Saturday. My 5 year old niece loves baking and on Saturday morning we made these cute cupcakes for my sister’s birthday. My niece is going to be a talented baker! She has immense patience for a 5 year old when baking and a steady hand when it comes to mixing, folding and even cracking open eggs (she cracked 7 eggs over the weekend for different things we baked and not one piece of shell at all).

These cupcakes are chocolate cupcakes decorated with whipped cream that we tinted pink. We sprinkled them with some pretty pink sprinkles that I bought from foodtown and then topped them with sugar roses that the lovely Lorraine from Not Quite Nigella sent me from Sydney. The purple rosebud is actually one that I made – my first attempt at a ribbon rose and I must say I was quite pleased with the outcome. I have just started course 4 of the Wilton cake decorating classes, so will be posting about my cakes in the next few weeks.

The cupcakes were delicious and the whipped cream topping was just perfect on the pretty cakes.

TWD - Espresso Cheesecake brownie

2009-09-01T09:18:00.003+12:00

As you can tell from my very slack posting I have been quite busy lately with family staying, busy at work and other things! So here is a very brief posting on this week’s TWD recipe which was chosen by Melissa of Life in a Peanut Shell and is Espresso Cheesecake Brownie. I made these for when I hosted book club at my house last week and they went down a real treat. Once again I must apologise for a rather terrible photo of a really delicious treat – a busy life means hurried photos.

These cheesecake brownie were more cheesecake than brownie – a brownie base with an espresso flavoured cheesecake topping and then a layer of sweetened sour cream on top. I am not a coffee drinker, but the coffee flavour of the cheesecake topping was not so pronounced as to bother a non coffee drinker. I am not sure what the sour cream topping added to be honest. I would have been just as happy without it. My sour cream topping didn’t set all that well – maybe the consistency of sour cream in New Zealand is different to that in the US?

Anyway, the result was that all the girls at book club loved the brownie. I did too - it was simple to make, although it did take a lot of ingredients. But, I would make it again. See if the other TWDers loved it as well here.

Daring Bakers - August Challenge

2009-08-27T09:36:00.003+12:00

It’s that time again – the August daring bakers challenge is un-veiled and I must apologise for the ugliest looking dobos torte you have ever seen. It tastes good though.

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful
of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos
Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite
Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague. Lorraine is one of my favourite bloggers, but her pick and I didn’t really agree.

The dobos is a layer cake – each layer is a light sponge filled with a chocolate buttercream filling. The difference with the dobos torte is that the final layer has a layer of toffee poured over it. It also has crushed hazelnuts pressed on the sides and whole hazelnuts prop up the little toffee shards on the top of the cake. Instead of making one or two cakes and slicing into layers, you make each of the cake layers individually. I halved the recipe and made much 15cm round cakes. The cake layers were fairly easy – sponge cakes really. The real recipe was for buttercream made with eggs, but the eggs were undercooked and one of my eaters is pregnant, so I made a simple chocolate buttercream using the mock cream recipe in the Edmonds book and adding cocoa powder.

I am not sure what happened with my toffee. It went a nice dark toffee colour, but maybe I didn’t take it far enough as it didn’t crisp up like toffee at the end. I just don’t think I have the patience to be a pastry chef. I adore baking and I have fun decorating cakes in my own rather non-creative way, but attention to detail for something like the dobos torte is lacking a bit.

On the bright side my husband loved this cake. I thought it was ok, but then I like pretty plain cakes and am not huge on lots of filling – unless it is whipped cream!

Have a look here and you will more than likely see what a real Dobos Torte looks like when you check out the other Daring bakers’ tortes.

TWD - Creamiest Lime Cream Pie

2009-08-25T08:50:00.003+12:00

This week’s TWD recipe was picked by Linda of Tender Crumb and is Creamiest, Lime Cream Pie. I was fortunate enough to be given a bag of limes a few weeks ago. I preserved most of them but have also kept some in the fridge where they keep for ages. I used some of them to make this pie.

We didn’t really have call for a large pie in the weekend, so I divided the recipe in half. I also had a piece of Dorie’s pie crust in the freezer from another recipe and there was enough there to make three individual pies. The lime cream is essentially a lime curd, made in a double boiler. You whisk your eggs, sugar and lime juice and zest over simmering water until it becomes thick and reaches 180F. You then let it cool a little and then blend (I used a food processor), adding lumps of softened butter as you go. My lime curd wasn’t as creamy as others would have been as I practically halved the amount of butter stipulated in the recipe. I just don’t think that the curd needed that butter, and my husband was watching me make it and was horrified at the amount of butter going into that curd!

There was also meant to be ginger in the curd. Lime and ginger do go really well together, but my husband doesn’t really like ginger that much, so I actually left it out and went for a pure lime cream pie.

The topping is a simple meringue which is then grilled. I hadn’t used the grill function in my new oven before and over browned the tops of my pies a little as I over estimated how long it would take. I loved this recipe. I loved the tanginess the limes gave to the curd – not quite as sweet as lemon curd and I loved the fluffy marshmallow topping. I took two of the pies into our neighbours for their supper and my husband and I shared the third for our pudding. I also have a little lime curd left in the fridge which I think I will probably just eat straight from the fridge with a spoon over the next couple of days.

See what the other TWDers thought here.

Hazelnut & Cinnamon Truffles

2009-08-24T09:56:00.003+12:00

My sister gave me a bar of whittakers milk chocolate with hazelnuts. I love nuts and I love chocolate, but not together, so the chocolate had been waiting in the scullery for the opportune time to be used. (I eat the chocolate off scorched almonds and throw the almond out, even though I love almonds ordinarily by themselves). We were invited to a party on Saturday night which was one of those “no presents” parties – I personally will never have one of those!! I don’t count home made truffles as a present, so I used the milk hazelnut chocolate to make some truffles.

There was a recipe in a Donna Hay magazine a while ago for hazelnut and cinnamon truffles. I used this idea as a base, melting the 250g block of hazelnut chocolate with 100ml cream and 1 tsp cinnamon. Actually, I heated the cream in the microwave and then stirred it into the chocolate and cinnamon. I left the mixture in the fridge over night to set up (if you were doing the whole lot in one day, it would probably take about 3-4 hours to set up), rolled into balls using a melon baller and then rolled the balls in cocoa. So easy and so yummy.